This game is pissing me off.

[Fitcher]

Why does this game make me feel like i have to cheat in order to have fun?

Starting a colony can be done in a few min and if it get whiped out yeah just go back and start a new one.

But with so much options and RNG factored into thing, if you want "a specific" start you need to start and spend hours or even days rerolling pawns or maps (or both) to get desired start.

So i know i probably have too many things i want when i start a game and the more things you look for the longer or harder it gets to gain those things on a new colony.

But my issue is the fact that i play naked brutality and i would be fine if my pawn dies a few days in if starting a new colony would not be such an pain in the ass.

So my main things i look for when finding a good colony spot is dessert, river, coast line, marble and limestone and not year around growing.
So i spend time looking for one like this and after hours of finding it its time for my pawn...

Now as i want my first pawn to be the leader of the colony i want 3 simple things, Melee and Social burning passion and the "Though" trait any other passion or good traits are a bonus...

But i guess this is probably one of the 3 rare combinations to have as every single time i roll a pawn with those they also have some major medical issue or unable to do madic, cooking or dumb labor.

So after getting fed up and decide to download mods to help with the issue and now every single time i start a colony witch is faster but i just feel like "meh, i cheated a decent start" and after 10 min in i exit the game and go play something else.

[null]

Originally posted by Artjomski:

Start a new game in peaceful mode and get a feel of how the game works, then after your first 1000 hours switch to easy, keep upping the difficulty every 1000 hours.

This. Start small and expend. It seems counter-intuitive but I believe this is the way to go. In my experience, once the spiral of disaster start, at higher difficulty it roll too fast and often multiple issues arise simultaneously making it hard to control the outcome. The counter-intuitive stuff go even further; if you "cheat" and augment your wealth without a good understanding of your defending strategies you will get more trouble than fun on the middle/long run.

[White Rider]

Originally posted by null:

Originally posted by Artjomski:

Start a new game in peaceful mode and get a feel of how the game works, then after your first 1000 hours switch to easy, keep upping the difficulty every 1000 hours.

This. Start small and expend. It seems counter-intuitive but I believe this is the way to go. In my experience, once the spiral of disaster start, at higher difficulty it roll too fast and often multiple issues arise simultaneously making it hard to control the outcome. The counter-intuitive stuff go even further; if you "cheat" and augment your wealth without a good understanding of your defending strategies you will get more trouble than fun on the middle/long run.

I'd say start with "community builder" difficulty rather than peaceful. Still very low threats, but you will at least get the odd solo raider coming in. Playing with zero threats at all might teach you bad habits.

I've only got a little over 100 hours so far but I started with Cassandra and community builder and have now moved on to "adventure" difficulty, again with Cassandra. Having a consistent flow of bad events even if they are fairly low threats helps with the learning experience so you can figure out ways to mitigate them early.

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by Astasia:

I mean especially if you play with Ideology and Biotech where designing an Ideology and some new xenotypes for your game could take hours. RimWorld is a game where you spend like 20-200 minutes setting up a game

Whew!
I don't think I have ever taken more than half an hour in starting up a new colony (and I've played through 187 of them).
Most of the time these days it doesn't take me more than 5 minutes to get going and that's including all of the DLC's ;)
Even if I were inclined to create an ideal pawn, I'd use Biotech to engineer one in-game and take all the time I'd need to do so while playing the game than prefabricate one before even starting ;)

[White Rider]

Originally posted by grapplehoeker:

Originally posted by Astasia:

I mean especially if you play with Ideology and Biotech where designing an Ideology and some new xenotypes for your game could take hours. RimWorld is a game where you spend like 20-200 minutes setting up a game

Whew!
I don't think I have ever taken more than half an hour in starting up a new colony (and I've played through 187 of them).
Most of the time these days it doesn't take me more than 5 minutes to get going and that's including all of the DLC's ;)
Even if I were inclined to create an ideal pawn, I'd use Biotech to engineer one in-game and take all the time I'd need to do so while playing the game than prefabricate one before even starting ;)

With Ideology it probably took me a couple hours to create my ideal one. Then it just takes two seconds to load that ideology for future runs. The time investment at the start other than that is basically nothing.

If the OP is so committed to rerolling pawns for hours every time he starts a run until he gets his exact preference, then he may as well install the prepare carefully mod to just create a custom pawn that you can save for other runs, or random+ so it's still randomly generated but the game will just keep rolling until it gets your exact specifications.

There's really no need for him to take hours setting up every game.

I've got less than 10% of his play time and even I have figured that out.

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by White Rider:

If the OP is so committed to rerolling pawns for hours every time he starts a run until he gets his exact preference

I know right? It's too funny for words ;)

[The Yeen Queen]

Originally posted by Fitcher:

So after getting fed up and decide to download mods to help with the issue and now every single time i start a colony witch is faster but i just feel like "meh, i cheated a decent start" and after 10 min in i exit the game and go play something else.

So I'm curious. If you're going to spend hours rerolling to get the perfect setup and refuse to start the game until you have it, how is that technically any less "cheating"? All the character editor is doing in that case is saving you time.

[The Yeen Queen]

Originally posted by Beltneck:

Well that must be different with your mods and DLCs then. I've been playing vanilla since alpha 7 and raids were always tied to whats in the home area. Make yourself poor, raids stay small.

That's how you've assumed it works. You assumed wrong.

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by Night Foxx:

Originally posted by Fitcher:

So after getting fed up and decide to download mods to help with the issue and now every single time i start a colony witch is faster but i just feel like "meh, i cheated a decent start" and after 10 min in i exit the game and go play something else.

So I'm curious. If you're going to spend hours rerolling to get the perfect setup and refuse to start the game until you have it, how is that technically any less "cheating"? All the character editor is doing in that case is saving you time.

It's like spending hours stacking a deck of cards in your favour and then try to win a game of card toss o.O

[Supahz]

Originally posted by Fitcher:

Why does this game make me feel like i have to cheat in order to have fun?
...
But with so much options and RNG factored into thing, if you want "a specific" start you need to start and spend hours or even days rerolling pawns or maps (or both) to get desired start.
...
So my main things i look for when finding a good colony spot is dessert, river, coast line, marble and limestone and not year around growing.
So i spend time looking for one like this and after hours of finding it its time for my pawn...

?? If you're rerolling for hours, aren't you already "cheating" a bit, anyway? You're not just taking what's offered in the first selection screen.

It's not cheating to set your scenario based on what you want your pawns to start out with. That's kind of the whole point of playing a scenario. If you wanted a scenario with Conan the Barbarian and crew, you'd edit them to fit the character canon. I often do a Colonial Marines (from Aliens) etc and make the pawns match the persona. I can't imagine anyone rerolling for hours trying to get that when...

...This is all so easily solved by installing Character Editor and/or Prepare Carefully. You can edit as extensively or simply as you want, save equipment, save individuals, save the whole setup. In Prepare Carefully, just pay attention to your "points spent"... the higher the number gets, the more benefits you're starting with. So pick a low number and don't exceed it. I randomly checked the points allocated for 5 different pawns on the same desert map in Naked Brutality, and 1500 points looks to be average with humans.

As for rerolling planets... what? Why does it take hours to find a starting location?!? Just increase the land size, reduce precipitation for more deserts etc and generate the map. If you don't like the result, just press "back" and try again. Search the desert areas for the right stone, etc. For the record, in about a minute I found a desert tile with a coast, a river, a short growing season and with marble.

[Steelfleece]

Originally posted by Beltneck:

Originally posted by Astasia:

They are playing naked brutality so don't have any wealth. Also home area has nothing to do with colony wealth, if you can see it on your map it's yours as far as the game is concerned, except for unclaimed buildings (though the floors are always yours since they don't have a claim mechanic). If a visitor dies on the edge of the map and drops a gun and stack of meals, those are yours and count against your colony wealth even if you leave them where they dropped.

Well that must be different with your mods and DLCs then. I've been playing vanilla since alpha 7 and raids were always tied to whats in the home area. Make yourself poor, raids stay small.

Start a new map. Make sure it's one with ruins scattered around. Immediately go and deconstruct them, especially the floors. Look at the colony graph for building wealth. Although depending on what they were made from, you may wind up seeing item wealth increase even if you leave the materials where they were.

[Fitcher]

Alright so i can see there is a lot of opinions when it comes to using mods and so on.
Now i hope you remember when it comes to single player games every one has the right to play anyway they want and no one have the right to judge the play style people chose.

But when talking about a game and issues i feel like it should be without mods.
The base game is how it is meant to be played, that is how the developers chose the game to be played as.

Also try to understand some people dislike mods more then others, my self i avoid all kinds of mods that change game play until the absolute end untill i feel like i cant experience more from the base game. Mods i use are those that change the UI to look better or add collor background to pawns depending on mood.

And this is not just for rimworld but for any games with mods

So if we go back to rerolling pawns, like i said i want one with passion of two things, melee and social and the though trait because i want this pawn to be my leader in the colony.
It wont take long to roll a pawn with melee and Though trait but due to how the game is designed a leader benifit from having a good social skill i also need that for him even though i could go with whatever other he got.

Now i could just pick whatever and later on get one but hey, why would i start a game and hope to see this kind of pawn when i can more easily start a game by rerolling to get one.

Back when i first started up rimworld, before i even got any of the dlc, it was so easy to start up a game because starting pawns skills had nothing else to do with later game play except for the jobs they where good at.

[Astasia]

As I think somebody else mentioned already, without mods you can use scenario settings and/or genes to get the traits/skills/passions you want on your starting colonist. It only takes a few seconds to edit a scenario to force starting colonists to have the tough trait and be within a certain age range (older pawns have more skills). Or you can use the save system like I mentioned in the first reply to create a fallback point instead of constantly starting new games. There is no reason to do the thing you are doing that is "pissing you off." There are multiple ways to avoid it.

Also you don't need social skill on leaders, so that's not something you need to roll for. It only applies to trials and leader speeches which are entirely unnecessary and nowhere near as useful as work drive or combat command, social skill is not a factor in any leader related rituals.

[Hykal]

Social skill is far more important to Moral Guides than Leaders.

[AJABOOBOO]

the wealth count to raid size arbitrary rating is a problem in an of itself. I found reducing the overall size of the raids to like 75-80% i usually get decent raids that are not OP to the max.

That being said another HUGE and GLARING problem with RNG based story teller, que up events based on a clock and arbitrary numbers on map thing is:
In extreme temperatures or even dips in temp, the game will not throw human raiders at you. period. it will be a constant mech raid attack because the game MUST throw a raid but MUST NOT know how to gear the raiders to appropriate weather so it throws in mechs. every.single.time.

The RNG and "story teller" modes are supposed to make this a "story driven experience" but the arbitrary and inflexible algorithms that are set like clockwork can turn it from a story you "experience" into a clearly manipulated activity you merely participate in.

Usually i alter the story teller settings and place them in custom so i can manipulate the raid size, wealth variable to raid size and a few others that change the timing and scale of raids.

Nothing seems to fix the mentioned above problem of weather and raids auto-setting to mechs if there is at all the slightest temperature extremes

[whatamidoing]

It's not arbitrary if it's based on wealth (and population).
If you want random events not on a schedule, use Randy.