Retiring old colony and continuing with a new one (End game mechanics)

[The Blind One]

One thing I wish Rimworld did was to allow you to retire a colony and just start another colony under the same faction on the same planet (Dwarf Fortress allows you to retire your old fortress for example) this would work similar to the archonexus questline but instead of leaving your old colony in the hands of another faction you could just leave it as your own faction base on the world map that then sends out its own trade caravans, quests, visitors, etc that can interact with your new colony.

This way once you're done with a certain colony and have achieved your goals you could continue the story of your faction on the same planet and leave your old colony in tact (mothballed computationally really) while you set out for new lands to colonize and expand into.

When my colony is completely built up at the end of a game, all tech researched, defenses all around, everything is basically finished and the game has reached its end. I don't want to necessarely leave the planet or disband my colony and start completely new game, I just want to retire this specific colony and start a new one with maybe a few settlers from my old colony and continue on the same planet with characters and pawns I already love and enjoy.

You could have interesting 2nd generation colony story narratives. The kids of your old colony grew up and start their own new colony on the world map. Or your head researcher from your first colony could move out into his own mountain base and start a mechanitor only colony where he lives alone in his secluded base doing mad sciency things.

Build a colony in every biome in the game and spread your faction into every nook and cranny of the planet from the north to the south pole. Import elephants from your jungle biome base, etc.

Too often I don't want to leave my old colony behind but I also just want to start a new game. Why not have both?

(P.S and yes I know you can have up to 5 colonies supposedly if you edit the settings in the options menu, I'm not talking about that, I want to 'retire' my old colony while continuing the play with a new one, I don't want my CPU to burn out or the game to slow down to an absolute slog because it's simulating 5 colonies).

[Melkor]

I love this because no matter how much I ♥♥♥♥ up, I’ll just have a new batch ready for the same

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

I just want to retire this specific colony and start a new one with maybe a few settlers from my old colony and continue on the same planet with characters and pawns I already love and enjoy.

Isn't that essentially what you do if you follow the archonexus story line?

[Kittenpox]

The way I would approach this would be to use something like https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2688941031 (Vanilla Outposts Expanded) and maybe set up a caravan with the people I want to be in the new base, send everyone else to a Research Outpost (or whatever), and then when I've settled the caravan in a second base, abandon the old site and leave it as Ruins.

Alternately, without using mods, have one of your pawns imprison everybody who's staying behind, and then conveniently leave all the doors set to Hold Open as you depart & have a pawn walk from the prison cell(s) to outdoors, so that your "prisoners" can "accidentally escape".
It may require you to pick someone to be a sacrifice, sending the caravan first before releasing prisoners - and having the lone guard go get themselves lost in the wilderness after you turn your old base into a ruin.

Doing either of these would preserve the tech level you're at, which might not be what you're looking for - but there might be other ways to tackle that.
The first that comes to mind would be using a mod like this one to make your research be tied to your colonists individual knowledge: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2590854684

I can see the appeal of wanting this to be a vanilla feature, though. I used to do the same thing in The Sims, having the kids move out as they grew up & then continuing to play as them (each generation) instead of the now-elderly sims I started with.

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

Originally posted by The Blind One:

I just want to retire this specific colony and start a new one with maybe a few settlers from my old colony and continue on the same planet with characters and pawns I already love and enjoy.

Isn't that essentially what you do if you follow the archonexus story line?

Somewhat the major differences are that first, you aren't limited to what you can bring with you in my idea, you can take as many or as few pawns and items with you as you can realistically fit into a caravan and second in the archonexus story your old colony just straight up disappears including all the people. What I am proposing is that your old colony continues to exist as a 'base' on the map and functions like any other world map base and remains part of your faction.

It then sends out caravans which can bring your old colonists along for a ride so they aren't gone from the world itself. You may have visitors from your old colony show up every once in a while. You may get special faction quests and missions from your own faction. And you can request your old colony to show up as allies in the same way you can ask other faction allies to show up to help you.

[Jaggid Edje]

Ahh, I do understand the distinction now. Thank you for explaining. I never have done the Archonexus story line, so I wasn't aware of the precise mechanics of it.

I definitely like your idea. I usually play my colonies until they are destroyed, then start a new game, but I would absolutely love to be able to just retire a colony and take select pawns and things with me. It would be especially cool to have pawns that you used to control be the ones visiting you in NPC caravans, offering you quests, etc.

[Narn]

If you send a ship I think you can send another one later. So just send everyone you want out of the colony off world. Take who and what you want with you and start a new colony somewhere.

[Jaggid Edje]

You know it would also be cool if your old base could deteriorate in relations and end up raiding you. LOL

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

You know it would also be cool if your old base could deteriorate in relations and end up raiding you. LOL

Yes ...

but maybe that would be better for a whole diplomacy and relationships DLC that we'll totally get next DLC right Tynan? **prays in some mysterious language to the dark void gods**

[MadArtillery]

I mean, you can also just start a second settlement?

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by MadArtillery:

I mean, you can also just start a second settlement?

I mean, you can also just read the last paragraph of my OP.

[MadArtillery]

You could use vanilla expanded outposts I suppose to not have to manage the old settlements people and get resources from them occasionaly as shipments to the new settlement. You will still have to deal with the occasional raid and still have to abandon the old one to fully disable it but the people will still be living life and working in an adjacent outpost(s).

[x]

I see a few options with not much modding and I have done it.
First, you can build THE ship and send everyone away except a few keepers. I once sent about 100 people on a whip and kept 2. That was a **** show to manage a huge base. Lucky it was fully stocked.

Second, and I haven't messed with this in a while so might have changed, you can abandon base and move on to another. There is (was) also an option to allow more than one colony.

You can sell everyone to slavers (kinky), or have them killed by an animal horde (even more kinky).

The Archonexus "step" is actually a bit daft as you lose pretty much everything, including research. How come people "unlearn" how to make bows and arrows? But in all fairness, it would probably be too easy if we kept it. Plus, we get to cherry pick the people to keep, so that is a huge step.

I would really be happy with capturing enemy colonies and assigning a "governor" to them. Wouldn't have to be a "playing" colony either. A bit like Stellaries where you can assign governors to planets or even regions and just focus on the "big" picture. But Rimworld is not that kind of game.

One game that kind of makes sense in the "post finish" is state of decay 2. You end up cleaning up a town, retire the "colony" and get to start over somewhere else with 3 people from the "pool". The only things you keep is the characteristics of the people and their personal gear (plus there are a few colony perks depending on past achievements).
You can also later get other people from the "pool" by recruiting them on the ongoing game. We get to keep a "pool" of 50 (can't be sure if it's 50) people and they are always available to start a new game or be recruited (usually very expensive) to another ongoing game.

Originally posted by MadArtillery:

You could use vanilla expanded outposts I suppose to not have to manage the old settlements people and get resources from them occasionaly as shipments to the new settlement. You will still have to deal with the occasional raid and still have to abandon the old one to fully disable it but the people will still be living life and working in an adjacent outpost(s).

Or even occasionally (or permanently) get some of your old palls to help out at the new place.

EDIT:
Or even go a step further. Have an orbiting station with frozen Popsicles (regular people, clones or vat growns) on hand. I would love to have vat grown bodies ready to be implanted when someone's persona if they died. Altered Carbon anyone?

[Holttem]

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

Originally posted by The Blind One:

I just want to retire this specific colony and start a new one with maybe a few settlers from my old colony and continue on the same planet with characters and pawns I already love and enjoy.

Isn't that essentially what you do if you follow the archonexus story line?

No you just explode the plant in the end.