Too rich too fast?

[Die Monster]

Hey dudes. So I have a problem with getting too much wealth, so quickly and I get overwhelmed with enemys way above my defense. Even with a trap maze, i'm starting to get mechs regularly and mortars and so on. I have only 3 colonists with bows and 1 gun :D How to dump wealth or keep it down?

[di eshor ribly]

A few ways I can think of:

Make a caravan and go give excess wealth to nearby factions. It makes them happy and keeps your wealth low.

Get more colonists to defend your stuff.

Have you tried fire? The game doesn't count it as wealth after it's destroyed.

[Astasia]

Generally all you have to do is not go out of your way to try to generate wealth. Most of what you get naturally from enemies, quests, and surface resources, is going to be fairly useful to you and not spike your wealth more quickly than you can progress. It's only when you start growing giant drug fields, harvesting organs, chopping down half the trees on the map to churn out statues, or run a bunch of deep drills on gold/plasteel, that your wealth can start tipping up to the point where it becomes dangerous. In order to spawn one extra minor enemy in a raid on 100% scaling you need roughly 10-20k wealth, that's a lot of stuff.

Something to be aware of, there are a surprising number of mods on the workshop that can spike your starting wealth and make the game very difficult very quickly. Mods that add new floors that generate in ruins on your map, or terraforming mods that add a wealth value to normal terrain, can both cause starting wealth to be like 100k+. I suspect this might be more what you are seeing.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Die Monster:

Hey dudes. So I have a problem with getting too much wealth, so quickly and I get overwhelmed with enemys way above my defense. Even with a trap maze, i'm starting to get mechs regularly and mortars and so on. I have only 3 colonists with bows and 1 gun :D How to dump wealth or keep it down?

What comprises the bulk of your "Wealth?" Objects/Constructed stuffs/silver?

At some point, you're just going to accumulate it and the need to deal with it in some way is generally "difficulty level dependent." If you're getting overwhelmed, you'll need more/better defenses OR... to get rid of "wealth" stuffs.

IIRC, you can still put silver/items in Drop Pods and launch them to faction colonies and still get a +Rep hit. You may want to check that, though.

[ROE]

One sneaky form of wealth is animals. If you have a bunch then you might consider selling them, or otherwise.

[Chilli Dog Dave]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Generally all you have to do is not go out of your way to try to generate wealth. Most of what you get naturally from enemies, quests, and surface resources, is going to be fairly useful to you and not spike your wealth more quickly than you can progress. It's only when you start growing giant drug fields, harvesting organs, chopping down half the trees on the map to churn out statues, or run a bunch of deep drills on gold/plasteel, that your wealth can start tipping up to the point where it becomes dangerous. In order to spawn one extra minor enemy in a raid on 100% scaling you need roughly 10-20k wealth, that's a lot of stuff.

Something to be aware of, there are a surprising number of mods on the workshop that can spike your starting wealth and make the game very difficult very quickly. Mods that add new floors that generate in ruins on your map, or terraforming mods that add a wealth value to normal terrain, can both cause starting wealth to be like 100k+. I suspect this might be more what you are seeing.

dont forget a good crafter/artist/constructor can spike your wealth due to higher quality works.
i'v been boned on many occasions due to high quality products early into the game.
likewise good stats? better not train to hard because those skills also increase each colonists individual value is creatures.
tbh the more i think about it you are punished for trying to improve your pawns and their comfort early into the game, a good few lucky rolls when setting up and some free crap dropped onto you can cause more disaster than you expect.

might have to whip up a dirty mod (im no good at them) which increases wall value and decreases material value so that stone block walls = richer settlement while basic living furniture barely dents value.
then maybe reduce pawn value of all body parts by 10%, age by 5% and trait value by 5% so that overall pawns go down in price to the point slavery is more common place due to how cheap it is while still keeping value lower.
i dunno just some little things in mind, if someone else wants to make this and take credit for it im 100% recommending you do as i cant mod for crap and would make a very dirty coded mod

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Chilli Dog Dave:

dont forget a good crafter/artist/constructor can spike your wealth due to higher quality works.
i'v been boned on many occasions due to high quality products early into the game.
likewise good stats? better not train to hard because those skills also increase each colonists individual value is creatures.
tbh the more i think about it you are punished for trying to improve your pawns and their comfort early into the game, a good few lucky rolls when setting up and some free crap dropped onto you can cause more disaster than you expect.

A few decent weapons or clothing items for your colonists isn't going to do much for your wealth, we are talking 1-2k silver per colonist for high quality clothes and simple weapons, and those weapons will help more than they hurt. Later game gear has more value but is also more effective at dealing with enemies. I would say again it's only an issue if you are mass producing stuff to sell.

As for colonist wealth from skill gains, very tiny. Maxing out skills is like a few hundred silver difference in colonist value. It's only when you start installing bionics on every colonist that you see a small bump in difficulty from colonist wealth.

Little stuff adds up over time, but you are also progressing and building up defenses. The game shouldn't be a fight to remove or avoid wealth, rather to balance your wealth gain with improvements to your defenses. Take your resources and invest them into defenses rather than just trying to get rid of them.

[ichifish]

Originally posted by Die Monster:

Hey dudes. So I have a problem with getting too much wealth, so quickly and I get overwhelmed with enemys way above my defense. Even with a trap maze, i'm starting to get mechs regularly and mortars and so on. I have only 3 colonists with bows and 1 gun :D How to dump wealth or keep it down?

Unless those three colonists are hoarding mountains of loot (unlikely if you’re still using bows) your wealth isn’t spiking unless you have a mod that’s causing it.

Raid strength also increases over time, especially if your pawns aren’t getting downed/killed, which will slow the raid strength growth. Randy adds a 0.5-1.5 multiplier to raid strength, so if you’re on Randy you could be getting some rough rng as well.

As far as keeping wealth down you don’t have to do anything special, just limit yourself to what you need. Try to improve mood with good work assignments and food and don’t push your pawns harder than necessary. Try to avoid littering the colony with statues and other fancy stuff until necessary. You can do fine with hot/cold bedrooms or a barracks, and very little or no electricity for quite a while, depending on your map and colony size. Trading a lot helps as well as you lose wealth on every trade.

[Devirance]

cant believe no one has said this. make a cave or walled off area to store your items {away from your home area} on the ground not in storage make the spot critical and have them move the wealth to it then forbid the door clear the home zone and delete the storage spot. You no longer have that wealth and when you want to use it simply make it a storage zone and then you can buy things. just remember to delete the storage spot and clear home zone.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Devirance:

cant believe no one has said this. make a cave or walled off area to store your items {away from your home area} on the ground not in storage make the spot critical and have them move the wealth to it then forbid the door clear the home zone and delete the storage spot. You no longer have that wealth and when you want to use it simply make it a storage zone and then you can buy things. just remember to delete the storage spot and clear home zone.

Nobody has said that because it's not accurate. It doesn't matter if it's in your home zone or a stockpile, any visible item on the ground on your entire map counts toward your wealth.

[budisourdog]

Launch your garbage into other factions' bases via drop pods. You even gain rep for doing so

[Firestorm🗿]

Invest your spare wealth into your defences. Constantly do this to make sure you stay on top of increasing raid sizes. Researching improved defences (Guns, turrets, IEDs etc) should be your top research priority unless you badly need to research some other thing such as geothermal generators or hospital beds...

[Chashmodai]

Disable wealth dependent threat progression and just set it to the desired timeframe manually

[Swordmouse]

Two things that you can sink wealth into, that are both hugely advantageous and DON'T increase colony wealth: technology, and goodwill/alliances.

It's generally a good idea to ally with the friendly outlander clan as soon as is convenient, followed by the hostile outlander clan. Being able to request trade caravans is very helpful, plus you can trade that access wealth for resources that increase your defense, and likely make the goodwill cost of the caravan back in the trade.
And that's to say nothing of being able to request military aid when things get dicey.

And technprints and psi trainers are a great choice, too. There's lots of useful, expensive technology out there, and the same goes for psionic abilities.

[Diarmuhnd]

Originally posted by Die Monster:

Hey dudes. So I have a problem with getting too much wealth, so quickly and I get overwhelmed with enemys way above my defense.
... How to dump wealth or keep it down?

Welp, i used fire to burn all the stuff on the map that I do not want to keep or sell. That lowered my colonies wealth the fastest.
But even then raids could scale up beyond my pawns ability to defend and the only sure fire way I found to survive was to use mods. Some mods made enemies harder also, but that extra firepower makes a huge difference, at least for me.

No clue how to do it vanlla. Good luck/

[Firestorm🗿]

Chop or burn all the trees on the map, or failing that just the ones within a radius around your base.