What colony size is this balanced for?

[Senf]

In playing this (apparently) over 200 hours I never really felt like I had enough people to defend my settlement and have enough specialists for most things.

[whatamidoing]

The intended number of people seems to be somewhere from 12-20, from the population intent curve and cryptosleep pods on the prebuilt ship. You can make it work with any number, though.

[sooshon]

I find my colony workflow to be smoothest for my playstyle when I have 15-25 colonists, but I think a lot is personal preference and I know some people enjoy even bigger colonies while some people like tiny ones with just a few colonists. I'd say experiment with different sizes if you haven't branched out and see what works best for you. Another of my personal preferences is to add new colonists very gradually and selectively, only accepting high quality colonists with good traits and good passions (and everyone needs to be a good fighter) for what I need most at the time. Once things are in a groove again or the tech changes such that I might need more work-force in some specific area I consider adding another one and keep my eye out for a pawn with that specific skill I need, pretty simple.

[Senf]

Okay, next colony needs a bigger jail.

[Caz]

Also remember that you can adjust threat and other difficulty modifiers. Sometimes I find that's the better solution than trying to manage population.

[Senf]

Yes, I like these options for a more peaceful world or concentrating more on the survival in nature aspect.

[XelNigma]

If you feel like you dont have enough/good enough people to defend your self, chances are you have too much wealth. Dont horde things your never going to use. And that includes silver, spend it often on things that can help. Bionics and rocket launchers are the most combat direct but anything really helps. The value of that megascreen TV is less than what you payed for it. So your wealth goes down and your people have a fun new req item. Win-Win.

Food is another common horde issue I see. Its better to have more food than you need, sure.
But there is a point where you have years worth of food stored with more coming in all the time. Sell that off or slow down on the crops. It can be hard to judge just how much food you have while its in raw form. But if your freezer is overflowing, maybe tone it down a little.

And lastly, as others have said. You can adjust the story teller at any point in the options to make things easier while you recover then when you feel in good standing again you can ramp it back up. Or not. its up to you.
The key to a fun game is for it to be just hard enough its a challenge, but not so hard its demoralizing. Depending on the person, setting and mods that varies wildly. which is nice you can adjust the storyteller as need be,

[Realm Walker]

Originally posted by Senf:

Okay, next colony needs a bigger jail.

I prefer to only recruit very few prisoners now that I am at 8 adult colonists and one baby. The last prisoners I recruitet were a pigsnoot for its xenotyp, a baseliner with decent social skills that my colony was lacking and the surrugate mother of the baby who is also my best meele fighter.

[SievertChaser]

Guys, correct me if I'm wrong, but Transhumanist gizmos are supposed to drop that optimum number.

[vicandrei16]

Personally, I like the Android Tiers Rise Of the machines start, combining ATR and character editor to have a single T4, which is most times better than a lot of humans at once, as shown by the raids becoming less and less of a threat due to mountains ,high-powered weaponry and high grade armour

[Wasted]

if im playing an easy biome like temperate forest then the only reason to limit colonists and animals is PC performance. I am running about 70 colonists on current play through in temperate forest and not too many but lots of animals and my performance is still great so no reason to downsize.

I have 3 sangs and 3 mechs

When i had an old PC i use to have to limit colonists and animals a lot more. now I just have to keep my animals from getting to be too numerous, which is not too hard since i have to feed 70 colonists.

If I had a bad pc then i would probably start a new game in a desert type biome, that makes it much easier to keep a smaller colony due to less resources.

Temperate forest has so many resources its easy mode. This current game I'm using to learn about playing mechanators. I'm playing strive to survive difficulty , otherwise this biome would be super boring with my current skill.

My next game I will probably play in some type of desert biome for the challenge and it is likely my next colony will be much smaller.

I see no negatives personally to running very large colonies. the raids are epic in size, super fun and lots of loot. (you just have to be able to feed the colony)

[Tamiore]

With biotech, single pawn colonies are completely viable.
You can have genes that negate practically anything that would make a single pawn colony an issue otherwise, with mechs covering for the rest of it.

Frankly, a single pawn colony even has some major advantages in that you can safely have every social-related drawback active and not feel any of it.