Is it worth having more than one colony?

[Puxido]

I built my colony in large hills and I’m thinking of putting a prison colony on a nearby island Alcatraz style. Is it worth all the work to build and supply it?

[Narrowmind]

No, not really.

But the option is there if you really want to.

[VitaKaninen]

I sometimes make satellite colonies with the Set up Camps mod. This makes it a lot easier to form caravans and send them between colonies. It also prevents all your animals from wandering off and has some other benefits. You would need to enable normal map events in the mod settings so that it will allow raids and other map events.

[MadArtillery]

Unless you are strip mining it, preferably after stealing a pirate base so it comes with power infastructure probably not.

[Hoki]

is it worth it? no. youre basically playing 2 instances of the game at once. the game isnt designed for multiple colonies.

if an events happens you always have to check first which colony it is now.

it is worth it though to enable at least a second colony in the options for mining purposes.

[brian_va]

islands will still get all the raid types, including edge walk ons.

[Ghevd]

A nice alternative to multiple colonies is Vanilla Outposts Expanded. You can set up a hunting outpost for instance and they will deliver meat to the main colony. They can be raided I believe but otherwise are just icons on the map that deliver resources to you periodically.

Not sure why you would want a prison colony honesty. Seems like a needless resource sink with little to no benefits. I pretty much just have bedrooms that are prisons and once the prisoner is converted his cell is simply turned into a colonist room and he continues to live there except now the door isn't locked.

[CloudSeeker]

No. The lag will be insane. If you want multiple colonies, you need to have a small population with a small base. Which also means that each colony can't do anything you already can't do in one colony.

[Puxido]

Originally posted by Ghevd:

A nice alternative to multiple colonies is Vanilla Outposts Expanded. You can set up a hunting outpost for instance and they will deliver meat to the main colony. They can be raided I believe but otherwise are just icons on the map that deliver resources to you periodically.

Not sure why you would want a prison colony honesty. Seems like a needless resource sink with little to no benefits. I pretty much just have bedrooms that are prisons and once the prisoner is converted his cell is simply turned into a colonist room and he continues to live there except now the door isn't locked.

Roleplay mostly. Also still getting used to the large hills biome and was concerned about space, though the more I play the more I’m learning to build around or into the mountains.

Also wanted to make an area separate from my base to break/recruit and house prisoners to save space in my main base for housing and production. The island of choice is also mountainous and was going to have them strip mine it while building their own prison. Also figured there would be no walk off points so prisoners couldn’t escape.

[Veylox]

No, the game isn't made for it. You can if you want, but it won't be convenient, performance-friendly, or accomodated by the mechanics a whole lot.

If your concern is space you don't need to worry much, the longer you play the smaller your bases will get, because you slowly figure out that you don't need half the space you use. Plus increasing the size for a single map is probably better than having two separate colonies performance wise

Outposts expanded does allow you to have several little settlements all around without impacting performance, and it's usually good for unskilled/unwanted/prisoner pawns, I bet one of the add-ons for the mod already has a prison outpost too, but it makes the game significantly easier with lots of passive income from the outposts and almost zero upkeep on your end