How to really go off the rails with the general economy?

[A5G_Reaper]

So, new-ish here. Fifth year on the first colony that got past the first two seasons. I'm feeling like the colony's expansion have slowed to a crawl and I'm not sure what I could've done different. It's coming from multiple aspects that compound upon each other:

-Space is such a premium, even with everything squeezed as close as possible. Getting walls up to secure more ground is very slow because it's either haul from at least half the map away or have the miner drill slowly. But when she's drilling for stones she's not drilling plasteel/uranium/steel.

-Food is never short, but not quite bountiful either. Expansion of farmland is not possible due to above, and the larger it gets the further the planter had to walk anyway. Meanwhile there's insufficient space to safely graze the animals, had to keep them inside since if they break out I dont have enough tamer to catch them all before a portion wanders away. But without much space I need to dedicate farm plots for hay. I already tasked someone to hunt most things that spawn, with occasional drafted parties to wipe out the predators and megasloths and whatnot.

-Generally feels like there's insufficient colonists. Got 14 right now, but the larger base means much more time walking all around to get things done. Admittedly I could've designed the layout more efficiently and will do in the future, but for the moment it's not possible to rebuild everything with the stone and space constraint.

-Silver income is positive, but not quite plentiful either. Large portion of it goes to component, trainer, and bionics because crafting for everyone myself will take bloody forever. Crops and mining doesn't produce much excess to make meaningful sale. Got some off drugs, but it's limited by the farmland. Tailor and woodcarver are practically glued to their workbench but it just takes too much time to craft the goodies. The mood lost from organ harvesting doesn't allow me to do it often either, and most of those goes toward lung replacement for my asthmatic colonists anyway because there's no bionic lungs.

-And above all, negative events are getting unbearable. Disease hitting 4-6 people at once, disasters much more painful with larger investment going up the smoke (I hate cold snaps at late spring to early summer), and raids are more economically disastrous in general. The first drop pods raider landed straight in and incinerated my whole storage, took more than a year to recover from that. Another time a random mortar blasted open my fence when all colonists are staging up on the other side of the base, and I lost half the cattle to wandering off over the next few days.

All in all, what can I do to perform better? It feels like I'm stuck in a quagmire waiting for an eventual catastrophe to wipe out everything I worked for, if the storage and cattle pen incidents are any indication. Colonist loss had been surprisingly light, only lost one dude to a very unlucky headshot and another I banished. And one that died of plague recently but I happen to have a revival thingy to bring him back.

[Hamstadini]

Take my suggestion with a grain of salt since I’m new too, but:

What about doing an indoor hydroponics drug farm to grow Psychite? Then you can manufacture Flake to give to Rough Outlander Unions and Savage Tribes, drop pod the Flake to them to get your appeal up to allied. Then when raids from the savage tribes and pirate bands come in, use your comms console to radio the allies in. Once you have them as allies, you can sell the Flake for silver.

This way the problem kind of solves itself.

Also, Adam Vs Everything says burn stuff you don’t need. It decreases wealth which reduces the size of raids on you:

https://youtu.be/rVu_LcalIeM?si=k7DVwRYzuY61smAc

[VoiD]

Well, I'm not sure it helps, but here goes what I generally do.

- Avoid mountains, yeah, they are cool and all, but digging a proper base can take years without bionics, drilling arms, luciferium and high skill levels, I very much prefer to make a big base right in the middle of the map, of course, to survive there, you'd have to have a pretty good understanding of combat.

- As a regular, open base, I build everything out of wood at first, unless I'm playing on some challenging biome, of course, but wood is cheap, plentiful, and most importantly, very easy to work with, you can build new rooms in no time using wood, setting up your entire base in less than one season, after everything is done, everything is functional, I take my time replacing the wooden structures with proper stone.

- When building a base try thinking about pawn's routines, what do they do every day, and how can you minimize their walking? IE: fields should be close to the freezer, as storing stuff in there can take entire seasons, meanwhile the fridge should stay next to the kitchen, so you won't have to move too far to get more food, the freezer should also be close to the dining room, as everyone needs to get in there toget food 2x a day, every day, then move to the dining room, and then there's their workplaces, it's better if their personal room are closer to each one of their workplaces, so they can work until it's time to sleep, then get in there to rest faster, if you allow them to slowly walk around all day, you'll realize they really aren't working most of the time, they are just wasting time moving from point A to point B, working perhaps less than 2h every day. This is a killer in big colonies. Specially when you don't have good flooring and bionic legs/luciferium on everyone.

- Hauling is a huge issue in big bases, you really don't want to waste your 4000% work efficiency superhumans hauling stuff around all day, you want them to perform their task 24/7 if you can (and some do, as some, often more distant tasks are better performed by people who don't waste time going back to sleep every day, like deep mining, nuclear stomachs are good too, luciferium can take care of cancer), but you still need hauling to get done, so you should find a way to solve this issue, the old way was to train a bunch of animals, like dogs, to haul everything for you, I had some sucess with tamed spiders as well, but the process is a pain in the ass and I don't recommend for those seeking efficiency. DLCs have added new ways to handle hauling, such as Gauranlen tree's dryads, I once had one lobotomized psychic-sensitive masochist with a passion for triming trees, I gave him a mindscrew, luci, nuclear stomach and a circadian half-cycler, and a psychic harmonizer, the guy spent all day in joyous pain, doing the one thing he loved, at max mood, all day, pruning 4 gauranlen trees by himself as he never needed to leave, spreading a very strong mood boost to the entire colony, his existence was nothing but joy, and by handling the 4 trees he took care of all my hauling needs, and everyone else's moods constantly at maximun (until psychic noise events happened, then he had to be sedated). You can also use mechanitor's hauling bots instead, or cloned children I guess.

- As for defenses, if all you care about is the economy, then sure, packed rooms are fine, but get ready to cry every time something gets in your base, somehow, or when drop raids target the interiors of your base. If you separate every room with a 3 tiles wide corridor you'll create a base in which your pawns can enter any room to escape combat, and any corridor, any edge can be used as a chokepoint/cover to fight enemies anywhere, this wastes about half of your space, but it should make drop raids trivial, it will also help mitigate the damage from siege raids.

- Once you can get trading going by manufacturing stuff like aparel, drugs, art, whatever, start purchasing luciferium every time you visit a town, people are often afraid to use this, but if you're stable enough it's a huge boost for colonists, similar to having an entire bionic body, or being twice as bionic if you actually have a bionic body, the stat boosts are deceptive, as many of the listed stats also boost other stats listed in the same list again. Just don't try to live on the edge and tell them to take a pill 1 day earlier just to be safe.

- Speaking of bionics, getting them is also among my top priorities, every time I see a bionic part I purchase it, every time I see an enemy with bionic parts I use a stun lance to remove it, having a regular good miner is neat, having an industrious bionic miner on luciferium that doesn't need sleep and can reach 4000% mining speed, completely emptying a steel vein in a day or 2 is godly. Bionic industrious crafters are also on a completely different level for money making.

- Don't be afraid of drugs, never use flake, but yayo can be used if a total collapse is iminent, such as there are wounded people, your doctor is reaching a mental break, and if this happens, people will die, take the risk, use the drug and let him save everyone. If he's too tired while people are literally bleeding out take the awake and continue your work, sometimes it's just necessary.

Social drugs can also be used safely with a proper schedule, always add +1 day to the safe dosage to prevent mistakes, and remember, Beer can kill you, so avoid overusing if you can, tea is the best one, if you can avoid the addiction, and smokeleaf makes your pawn useless for a long time, so only use this when your mood is getting dangerously low.

Edit: One additional tip: manually set up their schedule in a way that makes sense, avoid making them run back & forth, it's better if they all wake up at the same time, then run towards the kitchen, get some food, get their enterntainement needs, get the mood boosts for eating and playing in a high quality room, then let them start working.

Also, if one of your pawns is specially annoying (neurotic people, quest NPCs you need to keep happy, people with strong negative moods like loss of a loved one) create a custom schedule for them, instead of sleeping all night make them sleep half as much as everyone else, do some things during the day, then sleep the remaining hours 12h after their first sleeping time, that way they will keep their rest & confort bars maxed out, greatly decreasing the chance of a mental break, this also makes them less efficient due to all the walking to and from their bedroom.

[Atrophus]

1. Are you playing on a small map? I fit all of my production, sleeping and recreation in a central 15*30 room size allround barracks. Around that there then is a storage room, a hospital, indoor farming... I even expanded into individual bedrooms after being set up square and fair.
You can have very compact space use. If you give everyone a lavish bedroom and similar space intensive things, a colony will quickly balloon in footprint.
Keep pathing in mind. Bedrooms can be on the far side of the colony, if your people sleep separately from the factory. They only need to go there and back once a day. Things that are often traversed, factory to storage for example, or kitchen to freezer, should be close by to minimize pathing.
Ill show you my base and map:
Just base https://ibb.co/g49ZtwF
Space between base and top left corner, my base is in the middle right edge of the map: https://ibb.co/kq9WkrM

2. IDK, a 400 size cornfield feeds my colonists for ages. 20x20 field and you get 8800 corn! Hunting animals provides a lot of meat. Go cannibal and you'll turn meat to biofuel just to have a use for it :D

3. Efficient, compact base design is important indeed. Your colonists skills barely matter if they have to already walk back for diner by the time they arrived at work from breakfast.

4. Farming is number 1. Just plant corn and sell excess. Another good one is drugs, farm psychite and do flake. Everyone buys drugs, its compact and light-weight... Organ harvesting and human leather also great income, but your ideology needs to permit it, otherwise mood hits as you said.

5. Negative events can be bad, but well, thats what they are for... Give you a challenge. You can reliably kill mortars before they get off their first shots et cetera, you can look up video guides for basically any threat.

[Seal Enthusiast]

You don't want to go off the rails with the economy, especially if you feel like you're struggling as it is right now. Raid and general threat severity is tied to your wealth; simply put, the more stuff you have just lying around doing nothing, the worse things will get for you. You want to run lean, filter all the resources you get into weapons and armor production. A good goal is to have everyone in at least a devilstrand duster(or parka in colder conditions), a simple helmet, and a flak vest. Switch out your main fighter's gear to heavier stuff like marine armor as soon as you can. As for weapons, while the charge rifle is the best, you should probably spring first to equip everyone with LMG's or Assault rifles, keeping 2 or so of your best shooters and fastest people (i.e. bionic legs) as snipers to deal with sieges with help from your own mortars.

Furthermore, going along with the previous statement about wealth, a good thing to look at is your burn apparel/ weapons and smelt apparel/ weapons. You should never really need a giant stockpile, and a full one should really be seen as a lack foresight on your ability to manage bills properly. The only things you should want to stack in any real bulk mindlessly is food and medicine, and even then you can safely say that you don't really need 40k to 50k food for a colony of 10 people for example. Remember to trade and give gifts often as well; while allies are generally useless as far as help in combat is concerned, getting allies will at least allow you to call friendly caravans to you, and in general giving gifts is a great way to drive down on needless wealth.

As a small addendum to the above statements on wealth, don't let it stop you from having cash crops, but just don't let your storage of such products get too out of control. Psychite tea, beer, and smokeleaf joints are all powerful mood boosts to your colonists that if administered correctly are non-addictive and non-health issue causing, with the added benefit of selling for a good amount as well. Try to keep a small glut of those items around to both sell and smooth out mood problems with colonists.

Also, post a screenshot of your base. When designing a base, you should design it in a way that gives you control of the map. A wall here and there at various checkpoints will let you build on most of the map without having to worry about most kinds of raids.

[alation13]

Without a few screenshots of the OPs base it is very hard to help with their build.
We don't even know the biome it is in, if it is open field, mountains or something in between.

[VoiD]

Postat inițial de Seal Enthusiast:

You don't want to go off the rails with the economy, especially if you feel like you're struggling as it is right now. Raid and general threat severity is tied to your wealth; simply put, the more stuff you have just lying around doing nothing, the worse things will get for you. You want to run lean, filter all the resources you get into weapons and armor production. A good goal is to have everyone in at least a devilstrand duster(or parka in colder conditions), a simple helmet, and a flak vest. Switch out your main fighter's gear to heavier stuff like marine armor as soon as you can. As for weapons, while the charge rifle is the best, you should probably spring first to equip everyone with LMG's or Assault rifles, keeping 2 or so of your best shooters and fastest people (i.e. bionic legs) as snipers to deal with sieges with help from your own mortars.

Furthermore, going along with the previous statement about wealth, a good thing to look at is your burn apparel/ weapons and smelt apparel/ weapons. You should never really need a giant stockpile, and a full one should really be seen as a lack foresight on your ability to manage bills properly. The only things you should want to stack in any real bulk mindlessly is food and medicine, and even then you can safely say that you don't really need 40k to 50k food for a colony of 10 people for example. Remember to trade and give gifts often as well; while allies are generally useless as far as help in combat is concerned, getting allies will at least allow you to call friendly caravans to you, and in general giving gifts is a great way to drive down on needless wealth.

As a small addendum to the above statements on wealth, don't let it stop you from having cash crops, but just don't let your storage of such products get too out of control. Psychite tea, beer, and smokeleaf joints are all powerful mood boosts to your colonists that if administered correctly are non-addictive and non-health issue causing, with the added benefit of selling for a good amount as well. Try to keep a small glut of those items around to both sell and smooth out mood problems with colonists.

Also, post a screenshot of your base. When designing a base, you should design it in a way that gives you control of the map. A wall here and there at various checkpoints will let you build on most of the map without having to worry about most kinds of raids.

All true, but there's one caveat to the late game.

Raid sizes have a maximun limit, once you reach that, wealth no longer matters, so trying to keep yourself poor will only harm you in the long run.

At this point each new pawn you can afford to equip & feed is one more defender against the same number of invaders, so the difficulty can only go down from expansion at this point.

Difficulty settings often increase raid sizes, but they won't change the limit, a very low difficulty game with bad wealth management can be just as hard as a max difficulty run with mindful management, and both are pretty much the same in the very late game.

[Seal Enthusiast]

Postat inițial de VoiD:

All true, but there's one caveat to the late game.

Raid sizes have a maximun limit, once you reach that, wealth no longer matters, so trying to keep yourself poor will only harm you in the long run.

At this point each new pawn you can afford to equip & feed is one more defender against the same number of invaders, so the difficulty can only go down from expansion at this point.

Sure, but most colonies will never reach that far anyway. As a reference to the OP regarding this mechanic, check here https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Raid_points.

[The Blind One]

Efficient base, room and workstation layout is probably one of the most important things in this game.

However if you want to really gear up your resource economy, cyberdize those workers. For miners get them those drill arms and for farmers get them those field hands, they are honestly very very good! A single field hand will increase their work speed by +160%! Yes you heard that right, they will work at 2.6x speed of a normal pawn! Give them two field hands and they work at the speed of 4 workers! Now that's output!

They will end up walking a bit slower tho, but if you give them a bionic leg, they'll more than make up for the loss. Give them two bionic legs and they'll zoom across the map.

Now bionics are a bit late game and more expensive so may not be at your disposal but you can with a bit of luck get the field hand and drill arm tech from a 'specialized limbs' techprint pretty early to mid game through traders (requires Royalty DLC tho). Even if it slows them down a bit, the 160% increase in productivity more than makes up the 8% slower walking speed.

For deep drill mining specifically it is slightly less effective, it gives 70% bonus to deep drill mining speed but that's still amazing if you think about it! Give them two mining arms and you get a pawn that works at 2.4x speed! That's more than double the production! It's like having an extra miner for free in upkeep costs!

These implants only cost 60 steel and 8 components as opposed to 15 plasteel and 4 advanced components for bionics. They are well worth it if your pawn is actually doing farming or mining related work.

Lastly if your pawn lost a hand and you don't have expensive bionics laying around, just install one of those specialized limb replacements. They are much easier to make and cost a lot less. They still give 100% utlity so they are better than prosthetics and considered just as good as a normal body part.

Honestly people are sleeping on these two implants. Field hand and Drill arms are amazing to boost your colony production.

[MadArtillery]

You shouldn't have such a sprawling base at 14. Are any of your rooms multipurpose? Shelves can be placed in every room type, a bedroom can also be a workshop, dining can be distributed in any high wealth room, rec room acting as a central chamber for primary storage, dining, recreation, often as a bedroom too for me, always the highest wealth room after all.

If you want to be extra space efficient you don't actually need walkways in dedicated store rooms such as freezers. If there is no spaces not shelves the pawn Will only slow down on the first shelf and then zip up to full normal speed.

Make sure your lighting is up to snuff, darkness slows people a lot, flooring or lack of flooring can slow people, equipment (both weapons and armour) can slow people. Save heavy armor for less mobile jobs like cooks or researchers who mostly sit in place all day.

*Hauling animals/robots/dryads should take care of things and have people drop finished items instead of bringing it to storage so whatever hauling network you've built up can automatically do all that for them. Shelves near workstation being loaded with material/ingredients, then the finished products automatically whisked away for them so people can stay on task. People shouldn't have to transit much as other beings can do that for them.* I do so love logistics networks.

[JCourtney]

Postat inițial de Seal Enthusiast:

You don't want to go off the rails with the economy, especially if you feel like you're struggling as it is right now. Raid and general threat severity is tied to your wealth; simply put, the more stuff you have just lying around doing nothing, the worse things will get for you. You want to run lean, filter all the resources you get into weapons and armor production. A good goal is to have everyone in at least a devilstrand duster(or parka in colder conditions), a simple helmet, and a flak vest. Switch out your main fighter's gear to heavier stuff like marine armor as soon as you can. As for weapons, while the charge rifle is the best, you should probably spring first to equip everyone with LMG's or Assault rifles, keeping 2 or so of your best shooters and fastest people (i.e. bionic legs) as snipers to deal with sieges with help from your own mortars.

Furthermore, going along with the previous statement about wealth, a good thing to look at is your burn apparel/ weapons and smelt apparel/ weapons. You should never really need a giant stockpile, and a full one should really be seen as a lack foresight on your ability to manage bills properly. The only things you should want to stack in any real bulk mindlessly is food and medicine, and even then you can safely say that you don't really need 40k to 50k food for a colony of 10 people for example. Remember to trade and give gifts often as well; while allies are generally useless as far as help in combat is concerned, getting allies will at least allow you to call friendly caravans to you, and in general giving gifts is a great way to drive down on needless wealth.

As a small addendum to the above statements on wealth, don't let it stop you from having cash crops, but just don't let your storage of such products get too out of control. Psychite tea, beer, and smokeleaf joints are all powerful mood boosts to your colonists that if administered correctly are non-addictive and non-health issue causing, with the added benefit of selling for a good amount as well. Try to keep a small glut of those items around to both sell and smooth out mood problems with colonists.

Also, post a screenshot of your base. When designing a base, you should design it in a way that gives you control of the map. A wall here and there at various checkpoints will let you build on most of the map without having to worry about most kinds of raids.

What is the math a good food stock per colony member? Say like going into winter and want to make sure you've got enough stockpiled.

[The Blind One]

Postat inițial de JCourtney:

What is the math a good food stock per colony member? Say like going into winter and want to make sure you've got enough stockpiled.

You need 10 units (rice, potatoes, corn, meat etc) per meal for simple or fine variants. Pawns eat 2 meals per day. So typically you'll need to store 20 units of food per pawn per day of winter as a bare minimum.

So assuming you have a standard winter of 15 days and had 10 pawns. That's 15 days x 10 pawns x 20 units = 3000 units of food to get you through the winter.

You'll probably want more than that though. 5000 is a good safety cushion in that example.

(keep in mind that vegetarian and carnivore fine meals require more resources, 50% more to be precise, so that would be 30 units per pawn per day)

[A5G_Reaper]

Wow lots of replies. I'm playing without DLC for the moment, so some of the options are not available. As a disclaimer, I do look up some game mechanic and general tips but I'd like to see what surprises the game can throw at me so please leave me blind on potential future issues.

Here's the screenshot:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3193422146
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3193422078
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3193421992

I've read one of the newbie guide and went off that, then I'm just figuring things out as I go. First there's the overall view, started with the work room, freezer, and storage at first. People used to sleep in the work room. Work room and freezer had expanded right a bit, you can see the shape starting to get messy. The sleeping room was one of the first addition, at first it's to house the starting three colonists but their mood got worse with the barebones personal room so I converted it into prison house before finally returning most of it into sleeping quarter.

For power I got 3 more geothermal generator off-sight, building each of them took way too much time and effort but at least they work well.

I restructured the killbox several times until finally getting to this one. Closed the one on the right, you could see the cables where the firing lines used to be as well as some unmovable turrets. Doesn't have any problem with external raid, and the mortars I built after getting the first mech ship part turned out to be very useful when a siege comes later.

Then there's the field. I got about 230 corn and 130 rice, because I've had lean years when I planted all corn but a random cold snap killed them mid-growth and the new batch didn't mature before winter. 170 haygrass that turned out was insufficient last winter and I had to wipe out my vegetable stockpile to keep the animals fed, currently looking to add more. 400 psychite, it's a recent-ish thing that I added from last year since I calculated that I need that much to upkeep my colonist usage. Devilstrand is for the clothes, but I'm actually getting more than I could use. There's a chunk of healgrass, and a small scattering of hops and cotton that I'll probably swap out for something else.

At the moment I'm building three expansions. The field toward the top-right corner, bigger pastures at bottom right (and change the killbox entrance while I'm at it), and the recently completed big room on the left side for... well, haven't decided yet. Likely a storage expansion for the bulk of it, but there'd still be some room left.

Anyway, it's not like there's a major issue right now. It's just I'm slowing to a crawl getting bigger, when I'm kinda expecting it to progress faster as I go? And each setback is simply becoming more and more severe, at some point I'll run into something I cant recover from.

[Astasia]

Postat inițial de A5G_Reaper:

I'm feeling like the colony's expansion have slowed to a crawl and I'm not sure what I could've done different.

I don't think you are necessarily doing anything wrong, I think your expectation of pacing in the game might just be a bit high. I usually play on 325x325 maps and my population often doesn't go above 8-12, yet I still tend to haul and cut most chunks on the map by the end of my playthrough. It takes longer to grab something further away, but that's fine really, if it feels too slow to expand with you might just need more haulers compared to other tasks. Your concerns about economy are almost the opposite of what the game encourages, difficulty scales based on your overall wealth/economy, so intentionally trying to get more silver or resources is actively making the game more difficult and perhaps leading to your point about how hard things are getting. That's not to say you shouldn't be progressing and gathering resource, but generally only as needed and I would say never "try to make money" unless you are very confident with your defenses and the difficulty you are playing on. The silver I accumulate most runs comes only from selling things I get from raiders, manhunters, quests, or shrines. At some point you can start making drugs as another recreation source and sell the extras, trying to keep the balance of the amount being created to not be excessive, and/or making things like wood sculptures and selling the lower quality ones as you try to beautify your rooms, but don't go overboard with that.

Edit: Looking at your screens you just posted, you have a ton of textiles adding wealth to your colony and making events more difficult. I would at least start selling the leathers and wools, that's a lot of silver for those lungs you were talking about, and selling it would be a reduction in total colony wealth.

[A5G_Reaper]

Postat inițial de Astasia:

Postat inițial de A5G_Reaper:

I'm feeling like the colony's expansion have slowed to a crawl and I'm not sure what I could've done different.

I don't think you are necessarily doing anything wrong, I think your expectation of pacing in the game might just be a bit high. I usually play on 325x325 maps and my population often doesn't go above 8-12, yet I still tend to haul and cut most chunks on the map by the end of my playthrough. It takes longer to grab something further away, but that's fine really, if it feels too slow to expand with you might just need more haulers compared to other tasks. Your concerns about economy are almost the opposite of what the game encourages, difficulty scales based on your overall wealth/economy, so intentionally trying to get more silver or resources is actively making the game more difficult and perhaps leading to your point about how hard things are getting. That's not to say you shouldn't be progressing and gathering resource, but generally only as needed and I would say never "try to make money" unless you are very confident with your defenses and the difficulty you are playing on. The silver I accumulate most runs comes only from selling things I get from raiders, manhunters, quests, or shrines. At some point you can start making drugs as another recreation source and sell the extras, trying to keep the balance of the amount being created to not be excessive, and/or making things like wood sculptures and selling the lower quality ones as you try to beautify your rooms, but don't go overboard with that.

Edit: Looking at your screens you just posted, you have a ton of textiles adding wealth to your colony and making events more difficult. I would at least start selling the leathers and wools, that's a lot of silver for those lungs you were talking about, and selling it would be a reduction in total colony wealth.

So I should just delete as much of the excess as possible? Feels a bit backward, but it does make sense. Or maybe I'll drop pod a bunch of them to make some friends, if I can find the steel for it. Why is the steel always gone

[x]

There are many ways to play the game, but I always end up with upwards of 100 people on my colony (more than that my computer may start to complain).

You can expand the game with mods. Deep storage is a must for me. Some vanilla extended (crops, farming, guns... lots of guns).

Research like mad. Hydroponics will help get more food with less work. Or use mods to terraform the terrain and improve the quality of the soil. Use sunlamps to grow crops indoors.

My bedrooms are almost always 5x5 and I have plenty room for 100+ people.

Hospitality helps you recruit more people (but rather slowly). There's Rimdeed to use the radio and access a recruitment pool that refreshes from time to time (you can also "sell" your people). Costs a bit, but if you have steady silver income, can be fun.

You can also imprison enemies and recruit them to your side.

You can use a resurrector mech serum to revive dead soldiers (I believe it's the sparkling worlds add on mod but I'm not home right now to check). Costs a bit to make and you need some skills for it.
I have lots of turrets and a huge fridge for the dead bodies. I chose the ones I like, cremate the ones I don't and then I resurrect them one by one, imprison and recruit. Devilish, I know.
Also, colonists sometimes get into the mood and make babies, adding to the colony. Takes a while for them to be productive, but it's rewarding and usually I manage to have them with great perks and skills.

There is also brainwash to recruit them faster and recruit those unwaveringly loyal. Also, propaganda TVs can help change their ideology.

Pick your poison...