First time doing ship to the stars quest. What should I take?

[Min]

So I am about to try and take my full 30 people colony to the ship location. Do I bother to dissemble all my work stations mortars etc and take it with me? Would it be wise to take granite blocks all my plasteel and steel? I got 500 package meals and its barely enough the trip is 27 days and i got around 30 days of food. I don't have enough animals to carry my entire base with all my supplies. I do have over 10k silver however so I should be able to trade for stuff along the way? In terms of gear most my colonists have flak vests devil strand clothes and marine or cataphract helmets.

[XelNigma]

Iv never done that mission, but I do know the larger and more value a caravan has the more likely you are to be attacked.
So even tho you have enough food now.
Chances are your going to be attacked a few times, take some injury's and incaps and that will slow the caravan down.

Chances are at some point you will need to abandon the old base (select it from the map and click abandon) and settle at a new location, build a temp base and restock your supplies.

You will need some building supplies like components, but I wouldn't bring stuff like wood and steel, that can be found when you resettle.
Definitely take the silver Incase you run into a trader so you can buy more food.

I personally wouldn't take the work benches or stuff. Just bring bedrolls for everyone.

Most normal mats can be found once you settle a new location.

[White Rider]

Originally posted by XelNigma:

So even tho you have enough food now.

You'll have plenty of food along the way with all the ambushes if you're a cannibal...

[Sad Cat]

The ship location will have all of the resources your old base location had. Don't take building materials like blocks and steel. It weighs a ton and you can get more at the ship location. The biggest thing to take with you is food that won't spoil, and a lot of it. Your pawns with grower skill will be able to forage berries along the way to supplement this so you'll go further than you realize. But foraging alone is never enough to sustain a caravan.

Keep in mind that each person eats two meals per day, so if you have 30 people, you'll need a good number packaged survival meals or pemmican. The last time I did the ship to the stars quest, I took 1000 packaged survival meals and it wasn't enough for 15 people plus foraging to make it all the way there. I had to stop and make a temporary outpost to grow more food and hunt to make additional packaged survival meals for the rest of the way.

You will also want to bring haygrass for your pack animals if you have any, so they eat that instead of your survival meals. For long distances I prefer horses to muffalo. You can only travel as fast as the slowest thing in your caravan, and muffalo are slower than humans. While muffalo do technically carry more than horses, its only by a small amount and not worth the hit to your map travel speed. Also make sure you have at least one bedroll per person. Not having bedrolls will cause your pawns to have to sleep for longer and take a hit to their comfort needs, which will hurt your pawns mood. The last thing you want is a mood spiral the moment you settle on a new square.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Min:

So I am about to try and take my full 30 people colony to the ship location. Do I bother to ...

Make sure you have more food than you will need in Packaged Survival Meals. You may need to consider getting rid of Non-Grazers if you think you may run short of PSMs. Or, bring them along and slaughter them if needed...

Bring some Components. You may need to construct something quickly.

Don't plan on surviving by Trading. You might be able to, you might not - What if they don't have what you want?

All your Medical supplies - Bring them. Bring at least enough to take care of several tough engagements. Bring a good supply and selection of Drugs, too - You may need the boosts.

Wood - Bring a decent amount, at least enough to construct several campfires and doors. (Maybe even some butcher tables)

You are going to want to plan to set up a very heavily defended position when you arrive.


How many pawns and how are they armed?

With what you detailed, I don't know that you will be able to survive the end-game scenario... It's also the rarest way for players to "Win the Game" because it's so difficult to do - It's designed to present the toughest situation in the game. You're going to experience a ton of combat, much more than you've experienced before. The journey can be very rough, but it's nothing compared to what will happen after you reach your destination.

Spoilers here, but also some good advice: https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Ship_launch

[Tohtori Leka]

I'm also doing that quest for the first time but I planned to do it from the start so I didn't build a big colony first. Made a 50% coverage map and started in northern boreal forest and the ship is in a tundra in the southern edge of the map. I managed to get some people and animals together in the beginning and packed what little I had, just bedrolls, all my food and any valuables. I sold all the valuables on the way for food and stopped a couple times to restock and also cleared some ancient dangers to get some nice things to sell.

Food seems to go much quicker than what the game says it's supposed to last and I was starving a lot, even had one pawn downed from starvation but the others managed to carry him to a nearby tribal village where I bought all the pemmican they had. Only had two small ambushes on the way so far. Now I don't have that far to go anymore but the rest of the way is only cold desert and then tundra so I had to stop at the edge of the desert to make a big load of food for the rest of the trip and get horses for everyone so I'll get there faster.

[Min]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Originally posted by Min:

So I am about to try and take my full 30 people colony to the ship location. Do I bother to ...

Make sure you have more food than you will need in Packaged Survival Meals. You may need to consider getting rid of Non-Grazers if you think you may run short of PSMs. Or, bring them along and slaughter them if needed...

Bring some Components. You may need to construct something quickly.

Don't plan on surviving by Trading. You might be able to, you might not - What if they don't have what you want?

All your Medical supplies - Bring them. Bring at least enough to take care of several tough engagements. Bring a good supply and selection of Drugs, too - You may need the boosts.

Wood - Bring a decent amount, at least enough to construct several campfires and doors. (Maybe even some butcher tables)

You are going to want to plan to set up a very heavily defended position when you arrive.


How many pawns and how are they armed?

With what you detailed, I don't know that you will be able to survive the end-game scenario... It's also the rarest way for players to "Win the Game" because it's so difficult to do - It's designed to present the toughest situation in the game. You're going to experience a ton of combat, much more than you've experienced before. The journey can be very rough, but it's nothing compared to what will happen after you reach your destination.

Spoilers here, but also some good advice: https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Ship_launch

the top 5 pawns are armed with charge rifles/ charge sniper rifles, the rest are armed with assault rifles or heavy smg at the very least. I haven't set off yet so I can produce a few more charge rifles before I go. I'm playing on the iron man difficulty with one save only Cassandra story teller in adventure mode so the difficulty is not super hard or anything.

[brian_va]

Pay attention to the temperature ranges of your animals and what you will likely run into along the way as well as your destination. Animals will die if they are outside that range, and you'll lose whatever they were carrying. Learned that the hard way. You'll also want to make sure your pawns are equipped with temperature appropriate gear and probably some spares.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Min:

..
the top 5 pawns are armed with charge rifles/ charge sniper rifles, the rest are armed with assault rifles or heavy smg at the very least. I haven't set off yet so I can produce a few more charge rifles before I go. I'm playing on the iron man difficulty with one save only Cassandra story teller in adventure mode so the difficulty is not super hard or anything.

Can you work up some better armor for those Charge Rifle pawns? Just pack it and let them wear their normal stuffs when traveling, if you wish.

You'll be facing an "endurance" challenge in terms of combat after you arrive. That means that you want to avoid accumulating as many wounds/injuries as possible while maintaining effective firepower. All of your front-line fighters are going to be exposed to many engagements, each capable of delivering injuries. So, a bit better armor even in one spot may "save the day" if it allows that pawn to continue fighting through the rest of the engagements rather than putting them down or severely reducing their effectiveness halfway through, with many engagements left to come.

As brian_va said, temperature is a big deal. The distance traveled often means you'll move into biomes you've not been forced to be familiar with. While most of Rimworld life is pretty robust, you've also got grazing to consider - If you'll move into an area while traveling and grazing isn't possible due to climate/temp, your animals could starve or eat up all your food. (Can't recall, but I think they can eat meals on Caravan... :) I generally don't do much of it anymore.)

Note: It's difficult to avoid spoilers when discussing this. Just know that it's the ultimate "win" in a game that prides itself on murdering player's playthroughs. :) It's survivable and winnable, though.

PS: How many pawns total and how many are combat-capable? If less than 10, either way, it may be very rough. Rimworld favors colony sizes of around 15, so use that as a judge of what you will have as effective resources. (Many players now play with more than that. I don't, usually, because it can become unwieldy.)

PPS: Good luck and best wishes! :)

[Min]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Originally posted by Min:

..
the top 5 pawns are armed with charge rifles/ charge sniper rifles, the rest are armed with assault rifles or heavy smg at the very least. I haven't set off yet so I can produce a few more charge rifles before I go. I'm playing on the iron man difficulty with one save only Cassandra story teller in adventure mode so the difficulty is not super hard or anything.

Can you work up some better armor for those Charge Rifle pawns? Just pack it and let them wear their normal stuffs when traveling, if you wish.

You'll be facing an "endurance" challenge in terms of combat after you arrive. That means that you want to avoid accumulating as many wounds/injuries as possible while maintaining effective firepower. All of your front-line fighters are going to be exposed to many engagements, each capable of delivering injuries. So, a bit better armor even in one spot may "save the day" if it allows that pawn to continue fighting through the rest of the engagements rather than putting them down or severely reducing their effectiveness halfway through, with many engagements left to come.

As brian_va said, temperature is a big deal. The distance traveled often means you'll move into biomes you've not been forced to be familiar with. While most of Rimworld life is pretty robust, you've also got grazing to consider - If you'll move into an area while traveling and grazing isn't possible due to climate/temp, your animals could starve or eat up all your food. (Can't recall, but I think they can eat meals on Caravan... :) I generally don't do much of it anymore.)

Note: It's difficult to avoid spoilers when discussing this. Just know that it's the ultimate "win" in a game that prides itself on murdering player's playthroughs. :) It's survivable and winnable, though.

PS: How many pawns total and how many are combat-capable? If less than 10, either way, it may be very rough. Rimworld favors colony sizes of around 15, so use that as a judge of what you will have as effective resources. (Many players now play with more than that. I don't, usually, because it can become unwieldy.)

PPS: Good luck and best wishes! :)

Just to add I am playing with simple sidearms and also training dummies so it wont be as hard as vanilla I imagine (I've been wiped even on adventure difficulty on my first ever play through, this is only my second game) I would say 20 out of 30 of my pawns are above 10 in shooting and the top 3 are maxed shooting and above 18 melee. Some prosthetic legs but I can build bionics for them if needed, or should I even bother? Perhaps just use the rest of my components and plasteel for armor?

[whatamidoing]

I've never bothered going for an ending, but I think if I were to go for the ship to the stars ending I'd probably do drop pods in steps. Pack people and food (and potentially chemfuel, since it's light, but it could be manufactured on-site if needed), drop as far as you can, settle and mine out the tile for a day for the materials to make more pod launchers, repeat until at the ship, then get a colony with defenses and enough spare supplies going before starting the ship.

[Min]

Originally posted by whatamidoing:

I've never bothered going for an ending, but I think if I were to go for the ship to the stars ending I'd probably do drop pods in steps. Pack people and food (and potentially chemfuel, since it's light, but it could be manufactured on-site if needed), drop as far as you can, settle and mine out the tile for a day for the materials to make more pod launchers, repeat until at the ship, then get a colony with defenses and enough spare supplies going before starting the ship.

I could try that way but I have 30 people so that may be hard to do drop pods for all of them over and over again

[whatamidoing]

The pods aren't bad and any map should have the materials for them. I think I'd be more worried about the chemfuel for fuelling them, depending on the world size.
I guess the important thing to note is that there's no rush to being starting up the ship once you get there, aside from the ship itself being moderately vuable. With 30 colonists on adventure story difficulty it shouldn't be too noticable, though.

[Steelfleece]

If you have plenty of neutral/allied settlements out there, pack all the silver you can. Even if you only have half a season of food on the convoy, if you're careful in plotting the route you can often hit a friendly settlement every few days and buy all their pemmican or survival meals. At the last few settlements, stock up on components, advanced components and such.

[ichifish]

I really like the ship to the stars quest. I've never done it with that many pawns, however. Along with the comments above, here are few tips:

The most dangerous part is when you've just arrived at the map as you'll have a considerable amount of wealth (the ship + your colonists and animals), rock-bottom mood, no walls to hide behind, and a big fragile ship to defend. It's fun to go as a huge group and deal with the logistical nightmare, but safer to send a few pawns ahead on horses with lighter loads so that they can set up a base for you while they have low expectations.

Ally with everybody you can before you go and bring the alliances up to 100 if possible. If you have to leave quickly, gift stuff along the way.

Plan for whichever season it will be when you get there. If it's summer in the north and it takes 30 days to get to the south, it'll be summer there.

Bring components (and advanced components if you have the tech). The ship map will have resources, but you'll have a ton of stuff to build in the first couple of days. The reactor provides 1000W of power, but you'll probably want more. If you have gold and jade to make walls with, take that. Save some silver for sterile floors. Take cloth for pool/poker tables and flak vests. If you have a royal, consider bringing a throne and plan for the drapes, braziers, and bedroom stuff. If you have an ideology sculpture, bring that. Bring chemfuel, especially if you have jumpacks, smoke packs, etc.

The ship map works like a normal map tile in that when you first settle it your caravan will appear in the exact middle and disgorge its contents in a vomit of stuff, creating a hauling catastrophuck. Then your animals will start wandering, it will rain, everyone will mental break, and you'll get an all-scythers raid. When you get to the tile, split your caravan and settle it with one pawn and no supplies, make a caravan packing spot, then have the main caravan enter normally. If you have Fluffy's Work Tab, uncheck everyone from "unload caravan" so you can drop items manually and leave unneeded items on the animals. If you don't have Work Tab, raise everyone's hauling so that they don't unpack all the animals until you need it/have a storage place.

Take more food than you think you need. You can buy pemmican and meals along the way, but it's not cheap. If you are a tribal colony (that is, if you did the lost tribe start) and you have experienced growers you can really forage a bunch of berries, but you'll want a lot of food for the first couple of days on the ship map. If you run out of fodder (kibble or hay) along the way the animals will be fed your meals and/or raw food. Don't forget that you might have days of low/zero grazing. You can either slaughter your animals or sell them after you get there, but most likely you won't be able to feed them for the whole ship launch.

Make sure everyone has the best bedrolls you can make, as you'll need those for the first couple of days at the ship at least. It will help a lot with moods, which will be rock bottom.

Everyone will be at zero rec when you get there, so take things like chocolate, beer, psychite tea, or harder stuff. You can make a bunch of hoopstone/horseshoe pins when you get there, but I recommend bringing at least one chess set as well.

Good luck!

[ichifish]

Forgot to mention that the ship will have 18(?) cryptosleep caskets, so if you want to send everyone to space you should have the ship tech researched and lots of plasteel and advanced components. Also just remembered that if you don't want to kill your animals you can put them in the caskets when you get there while you grow hay (conditions permitting).