Too scared to start a caravan

[fatburner]

Anyone else never go on the world map with more than 1 pawn? Just to trade.

Im scared that when i leave my base will be raided and i lose it. So i almost never do any of the quests on the world map. Sad

[Raymond]

Originally posted by Artaniz:

Originally posted by YariMurai:

Might as well just dumb those wealth around to begin with. Caravan ambush is a thing you know. Or get better at building killbox.

Ohhh no another 6 tribals with spears , or manhunting rabbits what will my two trader pawns in full cataphract do woes me.

oh ok I though you were just using fodders for that strat. It didn't strike me that you would send 2 geared ones that could have just stay home and shoot their share of dps or go somewhere being productive. Are those 2 pawns carrying half a mil wealth each to justify them standing idly in the middle of nowhere demanding your micromanagement to drop pod them food every 5 minutes?

[Kittenpox]

Originally posted by Smelly Fish:

I send a caravan shortly after a raid because I play with cassandra. She never sends a raid after raid (unlike randy) so I have a short window for trading.

I tend to do that too, and have a bunker for my pacifists and non-combat animals to hide in.

I also have that bunker behind a wall, so that if a raider sees my pawn and decides to follow then it won't immediately crack open the building when they bash the door down. :-)

This way if I only have a pacifist behind (because everyone dropped to poisoning/mechanites/whatever) the raiders don't take my people - and only damage my buildings+resources.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by somr:

Anyone else never go on the world map with more than 1 pawn? Just to trade.

Im scared that when i leave my base will be raided and i lose it. So i almost never do any of the quests on the world map. Sad

Caravanning is dangerous. Period. So, you're right to be worried about it. Sending off one pawn on a caravan is exposing them to every event that's possible and telling them to handle it by themselves... It is A Bad Idea ™. What's the most powerful resource you have as a player? Your colonists. That's where you really apply your power as a player in the game. If you have a decent sized colony and your force one of your colonists to go off alone on a caravan, you're willingly exposing a significant part of your power to being easily eliminated. (ie: "Picked off by the game's snipers..." :))

But, the mechanic of caravanning and doing associated quests IS game content - You should try a few and see if you enjoy the gameplay there. They are worth engaging with, fully, in order to experience the possibilities the mechanic presents.

I don't generally make it a point to do quests/caravans unless they're really needed in order to gain specific quest-only sorts of items or desperately needed ones. I certainly don't ever entertain the notion during the Early Game where I only have a handful of colonists. And, when I do go on a caravan/question, I generally send no less than three pawns and two pack animals. I also try, if possible, to have a drop pod ready to send out any emergency supplies/assistance, just in case. (And, that should hint that I don't normally engage with it until I'm in a strong mid-game position.)

When you do go, make sure to send a few QoL items in case they're needed. Sleeping bags, some wood for fuel/campfire and butcher table in case they need to stay, extra Survival Meals and food for pack animals, if necessary, and some doses of mood-improving items like smoekleaf/beer. Plan for the worst, hope for the best. :)

Originally posted by Artaniz:

Thats complete nonsense that its a cheese strategy. ...

"This is not the wealth you are looking for. We can go about our business. Move along."

It's complete cheese. :) You're circumventing the way wealth is calculated by removing wealth from the calculation by outflanking the calculator...

One could, one supposes, attempt to legitimize it through some sort of roleplaying narrative. But, at the end of the day, if that wealth wasn't actually yours, you couldn't sell it at your caravan's destination, could you? EVEN if one attempted to legitimze it in that context by pointing at only "base wealth", running a "permanent caravan" to hide wealth doesn't really have a legitimate interpretation of that via game mechanics. (For me, I couldn't imagine a more self-induced nightmare of needless anxiety... :))

BUT...

It's Rimworld. Nobody cares if it's a legit strat or not - It's your gameplay, so do whatever you want. Heck, it might even be some kind of personally challenging element you enjoy, so go for it.

[LIMP BISQUICK]

It's complete cheese. :) You're circumventing the way wealth is calculated by removing wealth from the calculation by outflanking the calculator...

Last I remember it does look at how much wealth they're traveling with. I would be very surprised if you saw no difference between 2 pawns in a caravan carrying your basic goods to trade vs 2 pawns carrying a serious amount of wealth when they get encountered. It's clear already that there are many player who try to see a pattern in their recent events that will influence their decision whether to caravan or not for safety reasons. Should we call this cheese too?

Furthermore, there are decent items to acquire with caravans. The amount of silver traders have at hand is serious limited etc. It would be no surprise for players to organically play this way if they're fond of the caravan system. So when you have one doing it on purpose vs one doing it organically the challenge that become present doesn't change. I'm really hesitant in calling that playstyle cheese.

[Astasia]

I feel like there is a very big difference between moving a lot of valuables around the map in a caravan selling to outposts, and storing everything in your base 1 hex away in a static caravan that serves no other purpose than to hide wealth. There's nothing organic or natural about that, there is no obvious gameplay reason for it nor a RP one, it's simply an attempt to abuse the underlying scaling mechanics, I believe that is the definition of cheese, assuming it even works.

As far as caravan ambush scaling, I have no idea how it works, it's not something I've seen often enough to notice a pattern, my caravans tend to be very light and fast so the few I had were small. One would assume it was wealth based somehow but the guy said his horde is only attacked by a handful of tribals at a time. Then again he also said he was only storing "tens of thousands" of wealth in it, so a handful of tribals would make sense for that, so perhaps really it's doing nothing but splitting his defensive efforts like having a second colony.

[Raymond]

Originally posted by Astasia:

As far as caravan ambush scaling, I have no idea how it works, it's not something I've seen often enough to notice a pattern, my caravans tend to be very light and fast so the few I had were small. One would assume it was wealth based somehow but the guy said his horde is only attacked by a handful of tribals at a time. Then again he also said he was only storing "tens of thousands" of wealth in it, so a handful of tribals would make sense for that, so perhaps really it's doing nothing but splitting his defensive efforts like having a second colony.

There is no way he only sent 10k wealth. 10k wealth makes very tiny difference late game. First of all, the more wealth you have the less raid size scales from it, and eventually it does reach zero (max threat size without Randy multiplier). The sum of wealth sent away can't just be measly 10k. 2nd of all he sent 2 whole (propably) geared pawns, let assume both of time combined has wealth of 10k eventhough the cataphract set alone is more than 5k. In a good killbox, each pawns can easily kill or down 5 times their own value worth. So he sent away 10k item wealth protected by with dps number that could easily offset 50k wealth? It is ridiculous unless he isn't using killbox or his defense is so bad his cataphract pawns can't offset 10k item wealth.

[LIMP BISQUICK]

I get where you're coming from as I've used to have the same perspective on things. Over time I've come to the opinion that these are legit strats. I wouldn't use them since they don't make much sense to me nor do they gel well with my goals. I'd argue that most of them don't even offer an advantage or make much of a difference. You can have players who destroy their valuables and beat their pawns etc, there's still risks with all of it and it does things like stagnate progression or cause regression. Some players would be in a better position if they didn't approach it that way. Often the end result is that they shoot themselves in the foot cause they're so hellbent on the fear of acquiring too much wealth.

This particular issue I don't see much wrong with it. The threat is calculated when ambushed, they still deal with consequences. While the risks is lower at your settlement that risks is now higher at caravan. It's more difficult dealing with threats safely outside of your home base IMO and many players will struggle with it. In a game that does quite bit to encourage you to use caravans, even having an end ship event where many players tend to transfer all their valuables, I'm sure such things were considered.

So many topics about raids, the reasons for them. What they're told is "wealth increase raid size cause they want all that wealth." For RP reasons it's not far-fetch for a player to think they're "hiding" their goods if they were to just stick a caravan a tile away.

[ichifish]

Originally posted by somr:

Anyone else never go on the world map with more than 1 pawn? Just to trade.

Im scared that when i leave my base will be raided and i lose it. So i almost never do any of the quests on the world map. Sad

Always never not be afraid!

Seriously though I’ve been playing solo starts and setting up solo second colonies for a long time and haven’t had much trouble with caravanning, which I do constantly (losing is fun, Randy, few mods, small colonies). There’s some risk, but not as much as you’d think.

First, small, low value caravans have little chance of being attacked and the ambush will scale with the caravan. You can see the visibility of the caravan while you’re forming it. The worst that might happen is you’ll get an extortion threat that you don’t want to refuse, but after hundreds of caravans and dozens of attacks I haven’t had an ambush that either 1) I couldn’t deal with easily or 2) extorted things I was fine parting with.

Second, assuming your base wealth is low caravanning out a single pawn will make raids there almost harmless. So you’ll probably get one pawn. This happens a lot on my “outpost” bases that I set up for logging or transport pod stations. Usually they give up before they get through the stone outer door, and always give up before they breach the inner door. An important caveat is you need a safe zone for your animals or plan to micro them from zone to zone to keep them running from the raiders.

If you are really worried here’s some raider distractions to keep your base safe, to varying degrees of cheesiness (in addition to an outer wall):
1. Leave some valuable stuff outside to steal
2. Claim ruins around the map (if raiders don’t have a path to pawns they’ll destroy those)
3. Keep a herd of sacrificial animals

For protecting the caravan, along with having a combat/medical capable pawn, these things help:
1. Plan to kite bad guys around the ambush map (you just need high mood and a decent ranged weapon or fast-firing close weapon like an auto pistol)
2. If you can afford it a shock lance
3. Trained combat animals
4. Emergency mood/performance enhancers

[ichifish]

As far as caravanning and wealth to raid size calculations it depends on your colony type a lot. My current colony in year 8 has 10 pawns (high for me; I try to stop at 6 and don’t want more than 8) and about 160K wealth, but that includes 4-5 pawns worth about 10k each. So sending them off with trade goods (usually less than 5k unless I get a bunch of jelly or something) has a significant enough impact of colony wealth that raids are noticeably easier -the caveat here being that playing on Randy makes judging hard as raid strength can be anywhere from 0.5-1.5 normal.

I don’t do anything special to control wealth, I just make small, hyper-efficient colonies. No turrets, few power sources, minimal heating/cooling, little art, no stockpiling, and constant caravanning to trade for pawn enhancements (bionics, neuroformers and psytrainers).

That said, at some point there must be diminishing returns because time is apparently a significant factor in raid strength. It may be that having fewer colonists messes with the raid strength algorithm such that the time factor is less important.