450 hours in - why do I suck so bad?

[mattkw80]

I've started over and played basically the same game of Rim World around 30 times.

I play Adventure Story (Medium) , Cassandra, Commit mode - and my start is the start where you get 3 pawns and a good chunk of stuff. (Crashlanded - I think it's called). I don't play with any mods that I would consider - difficulty changing. In fact last play through - I played no mods.

I play the heck out of the 3 pawns, usually get up to around 12 pawns - and get the research up to Multi-analyzer, and then that's about it for me. Something nuts happens - or 20 attackers come, bugs, mechs, etc.

It's everything I can do - to get where I described, and I find even that difficult - and a long haul.

I see screen shots with players that have 30+ pawns decked out in matching armor - and I'm struggling to starve to death in Winter.

I love this game - but it's a struggle, and I feel lowering the difficulty isn't how it was intended to be played.
I feel like I'm missing something others are doing. Is this a hard game, or am I just really bad at it ?

[HevS]

First things first, play the game how YOU want to play it, not by some metric or thought that „it should be played like this because someone said it” (obviously, self imposed challanges are a different thing). If you want to save scum, do it, if you’re more into building and manageing a colony rather than dealing with threats like i do, play that way, and don’t let anyone judge you for that. It’s the beauty of Rimworld.

Since as i said above, i’m more of a manage type player, i can only give you a few good tips, but maybe others can help out you better. Raid strenghts are based on your colony wealth too, so for example, in a case you by some random event you get a really neat loot early (like lot’s of gold), it might be a good idea to gift if away, because the next raid strength will count that gold as your wealth.

Other than that, might be a good idea to look at kill boxes. It’s a layout which forces the enemy pawns to go to a certain choke point, making that easily defendable. There are tons of neat killbox ideas, even on reddit, check them out, they really can help a lot if you struggle.

[Bathory]

It is intended to generate stories of hardship. At a certain point, Cassandra does ramp up the difficulty and is very punishing. I suggest keeping an eye on your colony wealth - that's primarily what Cassandra uses to gauge how nasty the threats are. From my understanding at least.

Basically, you're going to need to try not to produce more than you need.

Honestly dude, there's no shame in lowering the difficulty until you're able to strategise around the problems.

[eighmy_lupin]

No one is really "good" at this game.

Even "experts" who play Losing Is Fun at 500% rely on cheesy tactics to survive.

[Cannenses]

Given that there's no one way to approach this game - I think you're saying why can't I manage my team/pawns comfortably. References to starving in winter, matching uniform, & so forth.

From a top-down perspective, there's mainly 2 type of bases: walled vs unwalled. There are hybrids, of course, but you're looking at essentially protect yourself all the time (walled) and the more freestyle (riskier & more open) colony. For either of these 2 main type of bases, you'll have to build your entire colony/infrastructure accordingly. How you do it is the fun part of the game, I believe.

In terms of mechanics, your colony (pawns, buildings, farms, animals, etc.) should always be focused on:
- food
- mood
- gear

Learning what you need to build what you want is really the key here ... and you just need to optimise time and resources to do it slowly ... faster if you're experienced, but the basic steps needs to be understood before going for higher-end gear (say, legendary cataphract gear). The esoteric stuff (like Role-Play as Cannibals, Vampire vs Wolves, etc.) can come later.

I learnt by endlessly dying & rebuilding on the same map for a few months IRL (about 5 colonies that I keep restarting). Try to do only one type of colony when you're learning -- walled vs unwalled -- you can always change your preference later. Also, test the difficulty level for the one you like & I didn't use Commit in the beginning because I wanted to learn how to do & re-do better.

[Swordmouse]

Two of the most common mistakes, and ones that can be hard to shake, are expanding too fast too quickly, and colony wealth. And they're somewhat related. A third "mistake" is just not being prepared for eventual encounter types, and learning that mostly comes with experience - usually by dying unprepared to that encounter.

Recruiting a few half-decent people from the last raid can seem like a good idea, and sometimes it is, but what it can easily result in is you not having enough resources to kit them out properly, Maybe the next raid you pick up another, and the next two more - so now you have a ragtag group with little to no decent armor or weapons because you can't gear them quickly enough, and in the time you could've built more defenses, you were building more bedrooms and a larger rec room and more recreation activities because you just hit moderate expectations and you need the mood buff and you're toiling away to keep up with the increased food demand. All the while, your new colonists and their furnishings are adding wealth to your colony, making raids a bit more dangerous.

Now, wealth management can be difficult, because wealth creeps up on you. Having months worth of food, tons of leather sitting around because your crafter hasn't gotten around to making trade wares, massive stockpiles of medicine, steel, piles of raider weapons, even things like stone blocks and wood - the sum of all of these can quite literally get you killed, because colony wealth plays a big part in the strength of raids. And it's not just items, either. It's your colonists, as mentioned. It's the herd of muffalo that's breeding like crazy, it's all the flooring, walls and structures that you might not need right now. Now, wealth management isn't 100% necessary, and I'd be the first to say it can feel a bit gamey, but running lean when it comes to colony wealth can make a BIG difference,
Two things that DON'T get factored into wealth are research and relations. The more tech you have, the more advanced you are, the better. Spend access wealth on techprints, but more importantly by far, take your access wealth and gift it to the friendly outlander faction until you're allied, and get a comm console built. This way, you can request military aid if things go really wrong, and request traders when you need certain supplies. Whenever a caravan shows up, feed them your access wealth to keep it down, and to replenish some or all of the rep cost of the caravan.

As far as being prepared for encounters - a parimeter wall, traps, smoke, EMP nades, mortars, and miniturrets all go a long ways towards amplifying your colony's power and guarding them against threats, so research whatever needs researching and get these as quick as you comfortably can. Keeping your wealth low in the process can help ensure you have the items before the associated threat arrives, which is huge.

Smoke is a hard counter for turrets, which will be showing up in mech clusters. EMP is a hard counter to mechs, and a mortar battery is a hard counter to sieges, and extremely useful, versatile tool for softening up tough raids, punishing sappers, and baiting certain enemies into coming to you. With strong enough defenses and a mortar battery, it really doesn't matter how big traditional raids get, because that just means more carnage per mortar shell.

Killboxes, no matter what anybody else says, are a valid tactic in this game, and a tool like any other, which has in-game counters because they anticipate you'll have one. Drop pod raids and sappers both serve to bypass this mechanic, and those who refuse to use a killbox do so out of personal choice, and are usually running mods that allow them to do so more easily.

Attackers must heavily outnumber the defenders of a well-fortified stronghold in order to have any chance of success, and your role is defender for the vast majority of the time. Always be working to shape the map into a haven for your colonists and a hellscape for your enemies. Build parimeter walls, setup a killbox, build traps, and strip all cover from the areas in which you'll force the enemy to engage you. Cover is KING. And find a weapon or two you like, arm your colonists with them, and design your defenses with their ideal ranges in mind. Raids, consisting of a large variety of weaponry, will rarely if ever have a significant percentage of troops equipped with ideal weapons for the engagement.

[ichifish]

As HevS wrote, the most important thing is to play how you want to play. I can't really tell from what you wrote if you're frustrated or if you're OK with how things are going and just want to get all the shiny things. But if you like the game my guess is you're having a good time with the roleplaying part of it and not worrying too much about min-maxing. If you're playing as a "good guy" the game is significantly harder than if you play as a space-meth lord or sociopathic cannibal.

I hesitate to give you the following advice, as min-maxing can bleed enjoyment out of the game, but here are some things to consider:

1. Sudden big raids
If you're getting surprised by a jump in raid strength, that's probably the result of the way raid strength ramps up. Raids are calculated on basically two things: colony wealth (including the value of your pawns) and number of pawns. It just so happens that at the period you describe getting whomped, both of those are increasing simultaneously. That is, your economic engine is running and you're finally buying/crafting good stuff and/or generating a lot of wealth, the value of your pawns has increased as their skills have gone up (assuming they're not missing parts), and you can also recruit pawns quickly (who might not have good shooting/melee) and then increase your wealth even more by equipping them and building bedrooms for them. This can create a dramatic spike in raid strength compared to your ability to defend yourself (and is also the time when pawns lose their mood buffs for low- or moderate-expectations). My recommendation is don't expand as fast as the game lets you in either wealth or pawn-count. There's almost no penalty for taking ten years to get to ship launch instead of five.

2. Watch your wealth
Some tricks to manage wealth:
1) Installed buildings > stuff
Installed buildings only contribute half their value to raid strength, and uninstalled ones full value. So having a lot of uninstalled statues in a stockpile drives up wealth more than having the same statues installed, and having walls doesn't add much to raid size.
2) Stockpiles = death
Don't keep extra stuff around. It just increases raid sizes. You don't need 1,000 corn, 100 survival meals, or 5,000 steel. Get rid of everything you don't need immediately.
3) Pets = raiders
Animals count as wealth, and animals that can attack add a few points to raid strength as well. Make sure your animals are productive and you're turning the profits into defense.
4) Trade
Send out caravans constantly. Small caravans, like 1 pawn and a donkey, are unlikely to be ambushed by anything more than a dubber with a knife if they even do get ambushed.
5) The only wealth is wealth that can defend itself
Buy armor and weapons until you can craft better ones, buy insanity and shock lances, buy shield-belts and low-shields, buy psycasts and bionics, etc. Use your economic engine to make your pawns powerful and your base defense strong.

3. Micro
Lots of folks like to just set things up and let the game run or never pause. That's great if it's your style, but especially if you're having trouble keep a thumb on the space bar. RW's combat mechanics heavily favor the player and are a good balance for the RNG. Take advantage of that.

4. Commit to the wiki
Are you using the optimal weapons at the optimal ranges? Are you fighting tactically, using different strategies vs. different raid types? Are you using your cover effectively? Are your apparel loadouts optimal? Are your work flows efficient so pawns aren't wasting their days walking? Are you maxing out mood buffs for the lowest wealth increases? Are you taking advantage of pawn skills/traits effectively? Are you generating wealth in a way that increases your pawns' moods and skills? You don't have to do any of these things perfectly, but you'll notice a big jump in the ease of play once you set up elegant systems.

5. Make a practice run
Commitment mode is great for drama, but you'll learn a lot faster by making a practice game and save-scumming the bejesus out of it. I remember replaying some raids like ten different times.

[Astasia]

I would suggest turning off commitment mode and reloading instead of restarting next time. Reloading allows you to attempt the same problem again and figure out a solution, this teaches you how to deal with situations and as you continue to play and reload and learn you will eventually no longer need to reload because you can anticipate and counter what the game is going to throw at you.

Playing on a harder difficulty than you are ready for and on commitment mode is an incredibly slow way to figure out the game. There are hundreds of things that can "end a run" and if you are just slamming into them one at a time then restarting and spending many hours getting back to the same point, it's going to take forever. Some people enjoy that, "losing is fun" is a phrase some players live by, not everyone does though and it sounds like you would rather make some progress.

[hogany]

3 words - Nutrient paste dispenser. Its OP, learn to use it- my most succesfull colonies were fed on this, later when you have abundance of food you can turn it off. Also if you play on map where animals are rare, always start planting crops fast, especially rice. And start crafting stuff for traders so you get rich and can buy yourself anything. Read some guides about things to sell, but in short drugs, clothes (dusters) or works of art. If you are that person, you can also sell organs from imprisoned pawns.

[Païtiti]

Just git gud :)

[boytype]

Originally posted by mattkw80:

I love this game - but it's a struggle, and I feel lowering the difficulty isn't how it was intended to be played.
I feel like I'm missing something others are doing. Is this a hard game, or am I just really bad at it

Maybe play with commitment mode off.

If you get wiped out in a fight during a raid or you fall to another disaster, loading a save during that event and trying again is a great way to learn what you *should* have done to survive.

If you have to start over from scratch and spend 20 - 30 hours to even get back to the point of having a similar event happen again, your likely to just lose again and not learn anything.

Replaying the same situation again to learn how to overcome the challenge is a great way to use the save feature that does not take away all of the games teeth. You are never going to learn to get better if you are starting over from square 1 every time you make a mistake.

[Yo Homie]

Easy just have a mountain base. My last like 10 playthroughs I have lived deep in a mountain with one big entrance that lead enemies right to me. Also get a mod for no infestations that sh*t is aids.

I dont care how many hours you have you need to be able to reload and redo certain situations so then you overcome and learn for the future. So instead of making one mistake and completely starting over you learn right there and keep playing

[boytype]

You can turn off infestations in custom game settings I think. No mod needed.

[JD]

Seems all your games are the same, it's not about particular situations, you do the same mistakes over and over. You said you starve in winter, maybe learn how to build greenhouses or animal farms.

[mattkw80]

Wow - didn't expect this much advice , thanks everyone, I will re-read all this carefully and try some of these tips.

[キールス]

Play with Developer Mode. It is a good way to study the many structures and items in the game so you can plan out a strategy for an actual game.