Colony Wealth balance and hording.

[Micah]

I just installed a mod that lets me put some items "underground" with some pawn work, and any underground items aren't counted towards colony wealth. My hope was that this would address the problem of my colony wealth balooning because I like to horde, and I was sitting on 1200 thrombofur, a bunch of deathrest syrum, archite capsules, etc. which weren't being used but I was collecting "in case I wanted to use them later".

After doing this, I was surprised when my manhunter raids went from raids of 50 grizzly bears to a dozen rats and tribal raids similarly dropped drastically.

The problem is, now the game is too easy!

I enjoy hording, I don't particularly like the idea of throwing out everything that isn't immediately used and only acquiring stuff as needed, especially stuff that is rare but you may not need *yet* (thrombos, archite capsules, deathrest syrum). At the same time, I want a good challenge in the game and things that just make it so your horde wealth disappears seems to make the game too easy.

How do other people deal with this? One option would be to crank up the difficulty *and* use some wealth hiding mods. Combat Readiness Check seems to be another way to solve this problem, but the consensus online seems to be that it comes with some severe performance problems and that is actually my biggest gripe about RimWorld (TPS tanks late game).

[Jack]

You don't need mods to stop wealth factoring into raids. In storyteller settings there's a custom difficulty option where you can turn wealth scaling off.

If you find it too easy then turn the difficulty up a bit (assuming you aren't already on the highest) or use the custom difficulty settings to enable time based difficulty so it will scale up as the game progesses until it hits max points

[Micah]

As the tooltip in time-based-scaling indicates, there is a big risk that the game ends up either too easy or impossible at some point, which also isn't ideal. I did try it one time and it was super easy until all of a sudden there was an impossible raid. I'm not sure what happened exactly but I had to start over after many years because of it, which was quite frustrating.

I appreciate games that scale difficulty based on player progress, especially builder games as this allows you to choose your own pacing rather than racing against a clock. I just wish there was a way to scale by something other than colony wealth. Maybe scale by research tier, thus encouraging you to do some research, then leverage that research before you research some more? I don't really have a concrete suggestion here, just wish things were not so swingy as RimWorld currently feels.

[Steelfleece]

There's the old-fashioned 'form a caravan with all the expensive loot and some grazing animals, have it leave the map and park it on the same hex' routine for controlling wealth too.

[Jack]

Originally posted by Micah:

As the tooltip in time-based-scaling indicates, there is a big risk that the game ends up either too easy or impossible at some point, which also isn't ideal. I did try it one time and it was super easy until all of a sudden there was an impossible raid. I'm not sure what happened exactly but I had to start over after many years because of it, which was quite frustrating.

I appreciate games that scale difficulty based on player progress, especially builder games as this allows you to choose your own pacing rather than racing against a clock. I just wish there was a way to scale by something other than colony wealth. Maybe scale by research tier, thus encouraging you to do some research, then leverage that research before you research some more? I don't really have a concrete suggestion here, just wish things were not so swingy as RimWorld currently feels.

There's lots of custom storyteller mods. Maybe one of them has something similar.
I know there's an adaptability setting that changes the difficulty of the next event based on how well (or badly) you handled the last one but I haven't messed with that before so not sure how much effect it has

[Veylox]

I mean, don't shoot yourself in the foot and there won't be a wound

Remove the mod that killed the balancing and now when your wealth skyrockets you get proper raids.

The thing is, as long as you prioritize your defenses and gear first, the game can't properly punish you for hoarding wealth. Just immediately gear-up and prepare with defenses that can handle max-size raids and you can go wild with wealth pretty early on

The way I deal with it is simple ; I play it safe as long as I don't have circling walls and a proper firearm for everyone. The second I have a stone wall, chain shotguns on everyone, and a nice little killbox/burnbox/deadlife box, I never care about wealth ever again. I go full millionaire and make sure to get cool bionics, implants and psycasts along the way

There's too much cool expensive content in the game for me to micromanage miligrams of pemmican to make sure the incoming raid will have one rat instead of two, it's just unfun. Let me have a fully pimped out colony that can take out a hundred raiders, and maye I'll get punished at some point with a ravaging breaching or drop pod raid, but at least I'll get to try and use all the cool weaponry I've been hoarding to the fullest extent

I'd rather lose because the dozens of breachers are so strong that I have to orbital beam my own base to get a chance, than lose because I had one too many unit of leather on my starving colony and my guys decked out with spears and bows couldn't handle some overgrown cat

[MadArtillery]

Usually I just keep conscious of how much wealth I'm accumulating. As you do not think that is an option may I reccomend either just turning the difficulty down or using time based threat scaling instead of wealth based,

[Micah]

I have been thinking about this more and I think what I would kinda enjoy is a mod that makes it so each research in the research tree is like the mechoid research options, where you need to complete a challenge first before you can unlock the research. Challenges could come in various forms including diseases (meaningful early on), raids, caravan events, etc. There could still be raids between research events, but a bit weaker than your tech challenge raids and not scaled by wealth. This would allow you to prep for the next "unlock" just like you can do with anomoly activation and mechoid cluster calling.

I guess the problem here is that even at tech level 0 you can acquire everything through trade eventually, so you could get very "wealthy" (decked out) without ever teching up, so such a mod would need to do something to limit trading or somehow take it into account. Similarly it would need to still scale by population size, so a solo run is viable, just as a 40 colonist run is.

[Mringasa]

Considering Colony Wealth is a major factor in raid scaling, anything you do to adjust it is going to significantly increase/decrease the difficult of the game. There is a reason why everything on your map tile counts towards your colony wealth, balance.

I tend to hoard as well, but I've found a number of things you can do to decrease that wealth, just to keep raids closer to my colony's actual strength.

Give gifts. Use all that hoarded junk to increase a Faction's view of you. Thus you gain an ally, and potential military assistance during a raid, and it also removes your wealth without gaining anything like a sale would do. This is especially beneficial in an environment that produces lots of trees. That 10k wood that accumulates in your storage every time you clear an area for construction? Give it as a gift.

Bionic/Archotech implants. You can accumulate these through the various traders, and you are always on the losing side of the bargain. So you can reliably reduce wealth in this fashion, but gain something that is with you the whole run. Even garbage Medical pawns can benefit from this with a Surgery Inspiration and a couple of those "real" meds you've been stockpiling for just in case situations.

Deathrest serums, Archite capsules, and all the other random high tech, high money items that you think you need to hoard. Get rid of them. The game gives you ample opportunities to find these, buy them, or receive them from quests. A rule of thumb I go by for these types of items, if I don't plan on using it within a season (15 days), I get rid of it. I can get tons of them later on.

Make the good stuff. Don't just wait for an inspiration to turn that 5k steel and 100 components into a nice weapon. Craft a large amount of them, then smelt the junk. Same thing with clothing. Unless you are anticipating a need for it (within 15-30 days), use it up and gift, sell, or even burn the ones you don't want. If your pawn's crafting ability is at 20, even better, you'll get some nice, high quality gear eventually. Just remember to get rid of the stuff you don't want, do NOT add it to your hoard.

Burn things. Anything you can't use, can't gift, and can't turn into something nicer in a reasonable amount of time, burn it with fire. Stick it in a stockpile, forbid it, then let those molotovs flow. If you have a fire trap defense, stick it in there and let the next overpowered raid eat the fruits of your hard work while they gasp and wail for oxygen and relief from the heat.

Let them eat GOOD. Have a bunch of food stockpiled? Turn it into Lavish Meals. It's a good thing to keep a handy stock of food stuffs, but too much can hurt you badly. I try to keep around 2-3 times what I need for a week, toxic fallout is a thing, and then a week or two of something like Pemmican or Packaged Meals for emergencies. Anything more is just a waste of pawn time and raid points. So let them eat Fine/Lavish Meals for that lovely mood buff, and keep your wealth down.

Honestly though, it's just maintaining a stockpile that is good for 15-30 days of use, at most. A couple hundred steel, wood, or other resource isn't going to hurt you much, but a couple thousand will. Better to leave it out there on the map tile for harvesting when you are ready for it than to stockpile it because next annum you're going to build a proper Mechanitor lair.

If you want a slow burn colony though, something you can build up for years without being stressed over raids, adjust your Adaptation Growth Rate when you start. If you reduce it, raid size will grow much slower giving you time to "adapt" to your hoarding. Just make sure to keep the Impact at 100% so if you have a disaster, you have plenty of time to bounce back from it. Eventually, at a much later date, you'll hit max raid size but you have tons more time to prepare for it.

[cyboogie king]

Personally think time-scaled difficulty is a great idea. This would encourage people to build up fast rather than waiting for resources, research, raids etc. to scale up their base.

[Micah]

Not sure if you are aware @cyboogie king, but time scaling *is* an option in base Rimworld (if you already were aware of this please ignore).

@Mringasa I haven't found the same as you that it is easy to acquire things like archite capsules. An archite xenogerm requires 1-6 archite capsules, and with active trading with my neighbors I can collect maybe 2 a year. If I want to *eventually* build a small army of super soldiers I will need to spend decades of game time collecting archite capsules, and so it seems to make sense to start collecting as early as possible.

Similar for Thrombo Fur. As far as I know there is no reliable source of it other than random Thrombos wandering in, which happens once every couple of years at best, so just immediately turning fur into capes/dusters with your skill 10 crafter with no inspiration feels like a huge waste when in a few years you'll have a skill 20 production specialist with inspiration who can reliably make masterwork/legendary capes with it. If you don't save, you'll end up with a bunch of crappy capes.

For the rest of the stuff that you can acquire more of later without too much difficulty (like wood/leather) I tend to agree that not-hording is a viable strategy.

[Veylox]

Originally posted by Micah:

I have been thinking about this more and I think what I would kinda enjoy is a mod that makes it so each research in the research tree is like the mechoid research options, where you need to complete a challenge first before you can unlock the research. Challenges could come in various forms including diseases (meaningful early on), raids, caravan events, etc. There could still be raids between research events, but a bit weaker than your tech challenge raids and not scaled by wealth. This would allow you to prep for the next "unlock" just like you can do with anomoly activation and mechoid cluster calling.

I guess the problem here is that even at tech level 0 you can acquire everything through trade eventually, so you could get very "wealthy" (decked out) without ever teching up, so such a mod would need to do something to limit trading or somehow take it into account. Similarly it would need to still scale by population size, so a solo run is viable, just as a 40 colonist run is.

That would be a cool mod. Research reinvented does something similar but instead of going through events you have to study the components for whatever you're researching. Say you're researching drugs, you'll have to study samples of psychoid leaves or penoxycylline before you can complete the research

[Mringasa]

Originally posted by Micah:

Not sure if you are aware @cyboogie king, but time scaling *is* an option in base Rimworld (if you already were aware of this please ignore).

@Mringasa I haven't found the same as you that it is easy to acquire things like archite capsules. An archite xenogerm requires 1-6 archite capsules, and with active trading with my neighbors I can collect maybe 2 a year. If I want to *eventually* build a small army of super soldiers I will need to spend decades of game time collecting archite capsules, and so it seems to make sense to start collecting as early as possible.

Similar for Thrombo Fur. As far as I know there is no reliable source of it other than random Thrombos wandering in, which happens once every couple of years at best, so just immediately turning fur into capes/dusters with your skill 10 crafter with no inspiration feels like a huge waste when in a few years you'll have a skill 20 production specialist with inspiration who can reliably make masterwork/legendary capes with it. If you don't save, you'll end up with a bunch of crappy capes.

For the rest of the stuff that you can acquire more of later without too much difficulty (like wood/leather) I tend to agree that not-hording is a viable strategy.

That's the thing though. You want to hoard stuff, without paying the penalty for it. If you have piles of thrumbofur laying around, raiders are going to come get it. It's basically the entire game loop. Acquire things, grow wealth, bigger raids come.

If you mod it out, that's somewhat breaking the game since you aren't paying any penalty for your wealth. The only other option is to get rid of it. There's really nothing in between to solve it. You either accept the raids are going to be larger, potentially more than you can handle, or you take steps to reduce the size of them by using/trading/crafting whatever spare you have.

If you are going to aim for super soldiers, you're going to be weak for quite a while. That's just how it's going to be, so you need to adjust for that and either hoard less of other things, or build defenses that can take on the harder raids you're going to get.

Thrumbofur I personally find to be worthless. Much rather use armor + Devilstrand and the occasional Hyperweave I scrounge up. It's got great stats, but unless you can craft it immediately, all it does is cause problems for you. And really, by the time you have a crafter who can do justice to it, you're probably better off with Prestige Armor instead of a cape. You're better off with crappy capes you can sell to a trader for Excellent+ ARs, charge rifles, or melee gear.