Rerolling Colonists or Accepting Fate?

[ChrisPharmD]

I've restarted my colony a few times, and I feel like I spend way too much time rerolling for optimal passions/traits. I don't know how many times I've read "You need a builder" and then that same person goes on to list everything as a must. "They have to plant. Cooking is a must. They gotta shoot. Crafting is important. Research is important. Medical is almost a primary."

Like okay... that is rolling forever. Then, they can't be old, they can't have major addictions, debilitating illnesses, or deal breaker traits.

Might as well just mod it with Planned Carefully and save a default set.

I almost *never* have any good combinations of colonists unless I roll for an hour. Cooking is legit a myth. Passion for combat AND 1 or 2 decent skills is a myth.

I want to enjoy the game, but the rerolling is killing me. And it's not because I want the perfect squad. It's because I'm trying to follow the tips given to me on Reddit, YouTube, etc.

So, I'm now at the point where I'm questioning... "Should I just take what the game gives me and reroll off of mJor health conditions, elderly age, and colonists who can't fight fires or engage in combat?" Or should I keep those even?

I really don't like Prepare Carefully except to change the visual appearance of colonists. I can see how people can set their own limits and play their own game, which makes sense.

Like I said, it's insane trying to get all the primary skills + combat + young age + no health conditions + no deal breaker traits + perfectly blending it all together. It's possible. Just takes forever for me.

What do you do? I'm interested to see if most people just use Plan Carefully or if people take the stance that losing is fun, which I agree. I suppose there is some irony in picking the absolute perfect set of colonists only to get hit with a tragic event they cannot survive.

[rvg]

Prepare Carefully Mod is a great time saver.
I always custom make my initial group. Endlessly rerolling the RNG colonists is not my idea of fun.

[Caz]

Originally posted by rvg:

Prepare Carefully Mod is a great time saver.
I always custom make my initial group. Endlessly rerolling the RNG colonists is not my idea of fun.

200% this. Until I found Prepare Carefully, I could easily spend literally an hour of real world time hitting the Reroll button. Made me not want to play. And not playing Rimworld is as bad as Eating Without a Table.

[Zara]

I mean...I guess it's also a matter of what difficulty you're playing on. I'll preface this by saying I don't actually have a lot of time in this game, and so I haven't really pushed higher in the difficulties. So my opinion is: use what you're given, unless they are literally just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I think I've rerolled only a couple of times, and yeah, sometimes you don't start with a full spectrum of super awesome people, but I don't think that's something that should be necessary.

Cooking? I've done several colonies where my highest cook was like 3 with no passion. Sure there was some food poisoning, but I soon got a new recruit that was able to take over.

It's always good to start with at least one good combat person (preferably shooter imo), but I've done some low starting combat runs that turned out okay.

I think my only general must have starting stat is Contruction...5? So you can make the wood generator.

I think a Researcher isn't something to stress too much about in your initial picks, but in the end it's all a matter of preference.

As for undesirable traits...yeah that can bone you sometimes. I HATE anyone with Incapable of Dumb Labor, I feel it REALLY sucks when you're just starting out. Later on when you've got 5+ people already, having one or two with it isn't a problem, but starting with it kinda blows.


On Prepare Carefully...I've just looked it up, and I gotta say, it looks like a LOT, and unless you use points limitation, it would just be broken (unless you hold yourself back of course). If you use it to make colonists within the limitations of normal character generation, and you were gonna reroll for god-people anyway, may as well, just to save you time, but I doubt I'd ever use it, but then again, I have impulse control issues...

In the end, play your way.

[Seal Enthusiast]

Unless you play at higher difficulties, you should only be rolling for around a couple minutes. Usually, I make sure all people can fight, 1 can build, 1 has medical, 1 has crafting, and 1 has good plant skill. Cooking is completely useless as a skill, at least early game, as it not only eats up the time of one of your colonists, time which would be better spent on cutting stone or planting, but nutrient paste dispensers are also a more efficient and overall safer option. Mining, intellectual, social, etc can all come later, or in the case of mining, traded for.

[brian_va]

done it both ways. hit random three times for every starting option (location, pawn, etc). also spent hours creating "perfect" starts in prepare carefully. guess it depends on what kind of story you are after.

[rvg]

Originally posted by Seal Enthusiast:

...Cooking is completely useless as a skill, at least early game, as it not only eats up the time of one of your colonists, time which would be better spent on cutting stone or planting, but nutrient paste dispensers are also a more efficient and overall safer option...

That would be true for a non-Tribal start. With the Lost Tribe a good starting cook is essential.

[DaTank]

Are you looking to beat the game or play a story?

[Shas'O O'Kais]

I also recommend Prepare Carefully.
I used to reroll pawns for like half an hour or more to get the right combination of things I wanted.

With Prepare Carefully, I just set the background, passions, traits I want.

There is no advantage unless you cheese it and jack up all the skills and passions or whatever, but if you just focus on realistic starting pawns, it doesn't hurt anything, just saves time.
I also enjoy choosing my starting animal instead of having it random. I like doggos. :>

[Seal Enthusiast]

Originally posted by rvg:

That would be true for a non-Tribal start. With the Lost Tribe a good starting cook is essential.

Yep, that pemmican won't cook itself. Same with a researcher. That is why you get extra people.

[Caz]

Originally posted by rvg:

Originally posted by Seal Enthusiast:

...Cooking is completely useless as a skill, at least early game, as it not only eats up the time of one of your colonists, time which would be better spent on cutting stone or planting, but nutrient paste dispensers are also a more efficient and overall safer option...

That would be true for a non-Tribal start. With the Lost Tribe a good starting cook is essential.

Agreed. Though I find the Crashlanded start to be boring. I use mods to remove all starting research. I find that more fun. And without access to paste, you better have someone who can cook!

[Vagineer1]

Originally posted by rvg:

Prepare Carefully Mod is a great time saver.
I always custom make my initial group. Endlessly rerolling the RNG colonists is not my idea of fun.

I do the exact same thing. Doing nothing but press the reroll button for up to half an hour just to get a colonist that is just somewhat decent is not my idea of fun.
Prepare Carefully all the way.

[william_es]

I hit the reroll button, but now that I know about that mod (I did not), I will look into that. I agree with others, that endless rerolling isn't much fun.

My requirements have gone down over the years. This is my ideal group.

#1: Shooter, construction, mining (I like mountain bases). I need at least one guy who can shoot straight, for defense and hunting. Since they're not going to fight all the time, they need to be busy... ie, mining to make the base bigger & building stuff.

#2: Farmer. Hunting won't keep you alive for long, need a farmer. Plus if they're a cook too.
Annnnny other useful skills on this pawn are just a bonus.

#3: Researcher. Only way to get out of the beginning issues is research, research, research. Plus if they have any other decent skills (crafting pairs well, need to be able to actually make guns etc when they research it).

Social, medical, animals are helpful. I take em if I roll em, but I've made do before with horrible scores on all of those.

[AldouzTek]

Just reroll until you get Ironwilled pawn or at least steadfast.

[Vermillion Cardinal]

Used to reroll for hours myself to get pawns with the right traits and spread of skills. I also used Prepare Moderately which is more restrictive than PC. Eventually I decided that I was spending more time looking at the character creation screen than actually playing so I went into PC and crafted my own characters. Dropped PC for Character Editor instead in recent times.

Personally I'd take Construction, Plants, Medical, and some skill in combat to begin with. Good Construction lets you access traps, generators, and other stuff easily, and mitigates the risk of valuable components/resources being wasted by failed construction; additionally, you could go the nutrient paste route many seem to prefer and skip Cooking entirely. Plants skill can help cut down trees faster so your builder has materials to quickly setup a proper camp with furniture, and works faster on planting (harvests more and wastes less too). Medical for treatment of injuries and diseases, combat skills for the times when you can't avoid combat using traps (like that Nimble guy who walks all over them, RIP naked brutality run).

Beyond that, just keep a lookout for people to recruit with Intellectual, Social, and Crafting. Animals isn't strictly necessary since basic useful animals like yaks can be tamed with zero skill.

I'll definitely avoid pawns with disabilities like no dumb work, non violent, etc, and definitely no addictions (those are hard to deal with early on).

[HidesHisFace]

Prepare carefully or character editor (whichever you prefer) are in my opinion a must - if only for those cases when you want a specific themed run.

That said - if you are going for a legit run, there are some pawns that are plain useless, that is bound to happen with random generation.
But the number of skills that you absolutely, positively MUST have from the start is not that much - that is honestly, plants and medical. And you need semi decent combat abilities, so you don't get completely mauled by manhunting fox or something.

But that is about it.
Construction? You will be doing it a lot, and you will train it quickly - just make sure you don't construct anything with early components too early, when failure is happening often.
Cooking? Against, easily trained on need. Science and social, the same.
Mining is also not necessary, just very handy.

Now let's see the why do you need to have combat:
So you can survive early raids and animal attacks, simple. You want one of them to be better in melee.
Medical - you will get wounded, a lot. And early on infections will be deadly.
Plants - simply because you need food and healroot - unless map has ton of foragables and long/all-year growing period.
From other skills - you may want someone with reasonable construction and crafting skill, as resource and time saver.
Good passions are more important than skill levels.

It is nice to have reasonably balanced setup, but it is by no means a must.

As for traits for pawns - just avoid combinations that prevent violence and or certain jobs. Old pawn are fine, unless they are so old that they are on the brink of death.
Avoid addictions and chronic diseases.
The rest is manageable - unless you get very attached to your guys.