How good of a "let them do their thing" game is this?

[Shomlakone]

Because of my job i'm able to work from home and have my personal laptop running doing whatever. I have simple games where I dont need to give a lot of input, such as the sims games, running as a kind of, interactive wallpaper, while I have netflix or youtube going.

Would I be able to have some sort of colony going and doing it's own thing, just to see what happens, for better or worse? Or is this the type of game where if say, they get attacked by raiders, I *need* to tell them to start getting ready for a fight?

Either way i'm planning on getting it, since it looks like a fun time, but i'm curious if it's a game i can just have running while working without too many issues.

[Razor 2.3]

So long as nothing is going on, pawns will do their own thing. You still have to designate zones and lay down blueprints, but the pawns will handle their day-to-day needs and complete tasks you've issued by themselves.

There are also a number of mods that improve the automation of colony management. Turns out there's a contingent of the user base that wants to just idle in the game, and they know C#.

But raids and other negative events still require user input and management. Thankfully, by default the game will auto-pause when raids hit, and the easiest difficulty just disables raids entirely.

[Astasia]

Raids can be handled mostly hands-off if you know how to set up your base and defenses and play on a low enough difficulty. Occasionally you will get a siege or infestation or something that does require manual control though, so turning auto-pause off and ignoring the game for long periods of time on anything other than peaceful difficulty will probably end in disaster.

You could use mods and the scenario system to disable specific threat types, so you could still have raids and an AFK-capable base if that's what you want, but it will require a fair amount of knowledge of gameplay and AI behavior. Colonists do not get ready for battle or defend on their own, you will have to rely on passive defenses like traps and turrets, and know how to funnel basic raids into those defenses. A colonist can be told to attack enemies on their own, but they only do so if they enemy gets fairly close to them, and they don't come to the aid of other colonists, the game is designed around manually positioning colonists in combat.

[Shomlakone]

Thanks for the responses. It seems like unless i want to play on the easiest difficulty and play with a few mods, this is something i should be paying attention to while the game is running for the most part

[Sick Boy]

It's more a game you can play while watching TV or surfing the web. Something you can safely put on hold to deal with in-game stuff with out interfering with work, for example.

[ichifish]

Keep in mind that, assuming you want the colony to survive, “letting them do their thing” is something you can do after maybe a dozen hours of play, at least. Watch some unedited streams for an idea. The streamers are usually playing at high difficulty, but even on peaceful there’s a lot to figure out.

[RCMidas]

What you can also do is set your game to "pause on threat", so you get the opportunity to check back in later without the worry of getting overrun without you there to see what went wrong and how.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Shomlakone:

...
Either way i'm planning on getting it, since it looks like a fun time, but i'm curious if it's a game i can just have running while working without too many issues.

You can't treat it like an "Idle Game." You can, however, automate a great many things and somewhere around the middle of the game, when you've got most of your building/construction done, things will start moving more-or-less on autopilot.

But..

The game absolutely requires your attention. Why? Like any good game, it will do something to needle the player to "act." Events are a big thing and they will take place, requiring you to "do something" in response.

Once the player gets their various bits of Work fairly "automated" that's usually the time when they start focusing on "big projects," likely building better defenses and optimizing bits of their base that they've been putting off touching because... they were busy fine-tuning everything else. :)

There will surely be periods where not much happens, but you're still going to get things like Events creeping in that require a response/action from you.

Even so - You won't regret buying Rimworld when you get more time to play it if you find it "too busy" for you, right now. It's also a great "on the road" kind of game, too.


A good colony builder, survival, game that can be fairly automated and not require a lot of attention later in the game, but still has excellent progression and building/expanding options is "Banished." For some added stuff, once you get used to the game, the "Colonial Charter" mod ("Journey" is the current version of it, I think.) has a lot of extra build options. (Mods for Banished basically don't really add brand new "mechanics," but can do some funky things with buildings to add some types of new abilities/stuffs for your colonists.) CC:Journey has lots of extras, but isn't as overloaded as some others.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by Shomlakone:

Because of my job i'm able to work from home and have my personal laptop running doing whatever. I have simple games where I dont need to give a lot of input, such as the sims games, running as a kind of, interactive wallpaper, while I have netflix or youtube going.

Would I be able to have some sort of colony going and doing it's own thing, just to see what happens, for better or worse? Or is this the type of game where if say, they get attacked by raiders, I *need* to tell them to start getting ready for a fight?

Either way i'm planning on getting it, since it looks like a fun time, but i'm curious if it's a game i can just have running while working without too many issues.

Try Amazing Cultivation Simulator, unless you're playing on immortal with crazy difficulty there is a lot of waiting around as you cultivate certain laws or wait for the right season for your elemental breakthrough and T1 golden cores

[Wish Granter]

Leave screen for 1 second:
Chances:
99% for Drug Binges
95% for Meltdowns punshing your 50 stack of HE Shells
150% for Meltdown punshing nuclear warhead if available
199% chance for meteor hitting all your doctors in common room when playing randy
250% chance for 4 times plaque, worm infection, malaria and mechanite sickness when playing cassandra on anything higher then easy in less then 2 ingame minutes.
75% for murder spree on 35% (lowest treshold) meltdown killing own sprouse
500% for chain reaction murder sprees due to insulting sprees
100% chance for mech cluster to spawn with Sunblocker while solar flare next to your base, instant trigger and destroy colonie cause turrets dont work but mechanoids are magicly immun against solar flares shutting down ALL electrical stuff.
2500% chance for a pyromanic drug addiction to randomly join your colony and immidantly set your anitgrain warhead on fire next to your nuclear reactor cause he was haulting it and destroying your base.

Normal day on Randy 350% Merciless +.

All I wanted was to grab a snack.

[Shomlakone]

Originally posted by Corona Impfung (Extra-Trombose):

Leave screen for 1 second:
Chances:
Everything exploding
Normal day on Randy 350% Merciless +.

All I wanted was to grab a snack.

I see what you mean. I've been playing on peaceful to learn the ropes and everything is on fire in my colony lol

[Tux]

Originally posted by Shomlakone:

Because of my job i'm able to work from home and have my personal laptop running doing whatever. I have simple games where I dont need to give a lot of input, such as the sims games, running as a kind of, interactive wallpaper, while I have netflix or youtube going.

Would I be able to have some sort of colony going and doing it's own thing, just to see what happens, for better or worse? Or is this the type of game where if say, they get attacked by raiders, I *need* to tell them to start getting ready for a fight?

Either way i'm planning on getting it, since it looks like a fun time, but i'm curious if it's a game i can just have running while working without too many issues.

I know what you are asking and why exactly.
I would say for mid to late game, maybe.
early game, not so much.
For 'light afk work' the only game I can think of in my wheel house would be 'Force of Nature' and maybe 'King of Retail' but my memory on this is not super clear actually.

[Shomlakone]

Originally posted by Tux:

Originally posted by Shomlakone:

Because of my job i'm able to work from home and have my personal laptop running doing whatever. I have simple games where I dont need to give a lot of input, such as the sims games, running as a kind of, interactive wallpaper, while I have netflix or youtube going.

Would I be able to have some sort of colony going and doing it's own thing, just to see what happens, for better or worse? Or is this the type of game where if say, they get attacked by raiders, I *need* to tell them to start getting ready for a fight?

Either way i'm planning on getting it, since it looks like a fun time, but i'm curious if it's a game i can just have running while working without too many issues.

I know what you are asking and why exactly.
I would say for mid to late game, maybe.
early game, not so much.
For 'light afk work' the only game I can think of in my wheel house would be 'Force of Nature' and maybe 'King of Retail' but my memory on this is not super clear actually.

Partially because from the videos i've seen of people playing the game it *looked* like it could be a bit hands off later on. But man. getting to that point.

Didn't build a greenhouse-like area for my crops so now all we have is what was already being refrigerated through the winter lol

[Tux]

Originally posted by Shomlakone:

Originally posted by Tux:

I know what you are asking and why exactly.
I would say for mid to late game, maybe.
early game, not so much.
For 'light afk work' the only game I can think of in my wheel house would be 'Force of Nature' and maybe 'King of Retail' but my memory on this is not super clear actually.

Partially because from the videos i've seen of people playing the game it *looked* like it could be a bit hands off later on. But man. getting to that point.

Didn't build a greenhouse-like area for my crops so now all we have is what was already being refrigerated through the winter lol

actually I am going to upgrade my position to hard no.
because of raids and fires, you would have to have your headphones on or speaker on at all times and at least be able to hit spacebar when one happens

[123]

I agree it's not an idle game, you still need to monitor what they're doing, and what event is going on, make changes to job priority so they cover the many jobs you need them to do. There are a lot of X factors that will demand your attention.

It kinda has steep learning curve, I watched like 2 hours of youtube videos on how to play to fully get me going because the tutorial isn't covering enough. Even then there's still a lot to learn about the mechanics until you're faced with it or need it. So kinda learn while playing. Play with default difficulty to learn the full mechanics while playing the game, the pace is good, it's like the game is waiting until you're ready before it throws more difficult enemies.

[Tux]

now if you are looking for a semi-afk game, take a look at Wurm. It can be a pain getting it setup and deciding if you want to do the online version or your own private offline server but its very semi-afk