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[pisskop]

Rimworld is nice, but limited in the story it wants to tell.

Its main attraction is the visceral nature of it and better graphics.

You 'survive' but you dont 'live' is how I feel about it, esp with higher difficulties on.  The game actively rewards injury and death with less harsh raids.  Want less powerful raids?  Recruit a pawn you dont care about and beat the snot out of them occasionally with drafted pawns.

[Dostoevsky]

Alternatively, use the options the game gives you to reduce the wealth curve or switch it out entirely. I know the phrase is a well-worn at this point, but it's a 'story generator' that lets you decide the level and nature of the difficulty. No need to cheese.

[scriver]

I definitely agree on the cleaning point. I always end up having at least one dedicated cleaner, often more. Before you have the manpower to do that, in the early years, cleaning is a big mess.

One of my constant mods are (one of the) cleaning bot one. I often cheat one in if I can't trade for it early enough because it just builds up and spiral.

[Kanil]

The form of your colony has a role in how clean it is, too. One large structure is pretty easy to keep clean. A scattered collection of buildings sited on a beach is never clean. Ever.

Anyway, my biggest complaint about Rimworld, and I've probably already posted it in here at one point, is how tower defense-y it feels. It's definitely gotten better over the years, but I kinda wonder what the game would look like if the primary challenge wasn't "people show up outside your base and try to burn it down."

[pisskop]

I think the big problem that has is it just has such a huge disconnect between the local and global Maps

I don't really mind the cleaning, although it is a little on the heavy end. I don't mind the random nature of it, but it would be nice if it didn't procedurally generated every single raid.  When DF switched from randomly generated rate to tracking populations I was kind of disappoint at first, but I think it's a much cleaner fit for the game

rim world has all these information pieces like faction leader  and  faction religion, but none of it actually matters, and none of it is used in a way that builds a world

Everything feels like it's kind of thrown in half heartedly, and the hope is that somebody else will finish it with a mod or something

[heydude6]

The world/faction map is definitely one of the biggest wastes of potential in this game. I’d gladly buy a DLC that fleshed it out properly.

I once even wrote a design document about how I’d go about it. The only problem with those ideas is that they would eventually turn the game into a 4X game rather than a colony sim. Still, with ideology I think there’s a lot more that can be done.

[ChairmanPoo]

There are mods that go ibto that. Rimwar. Empire expanded. Vanilla outposts expanded...

[Chiefwaffles]

Anyway, my biggest complaint about Rimworld, and I've probably already posted it in here at one point, is how tower defense-y it feels. It's definitely gotten better over the years, but I kinda wonder what the game would look like if the primary challenge wasn't "people show up outside your base and try to burn it down."

I think one of the main reasons for this is a disconnect between how the Tynan is trying to design the game and how many, if not most, players end up playing it.

He sees Rimworld as a story generator. And it is great at that! But the developer has the ideal story of "survive and struggle just long enough to escape by the hair of your teeth", with plenty of loss and turns along the way. This is the point of raids and the like. To throw a wrench in your story, to create conflict and loss, and to pressure you to pursue a victory condition. Like reading a book with lots of major character death and struggle. Sure, some people don't make it and others have a bad time, but the point of it is to create a compelling experience for the reader.

Players often see Rimworld in ways along the lines of "create and prosper in a huge megabase." I know I do. But this turns raids from "generate conflict, loss, and pressure" to "obstacle to my Victory that must be Beat." People will game AI, savescum, and otherwise pour tons of effort into ensuring that they do Beat the raids and other enemies. Where "my base was overwhelmed by a raid that killed two talented colonists and kidnapped another" would be an acceptable and desirable outcome for Tynan, it's considered a complete failure for many players.

[Radsoc]

Very good take on the dilemma of Rimworld.

I played Tynan-style the first playthroughs, but after having achieved that, I was more interested in staying put and develop.

[Funk]

People will game AI, savescum, and otherwise pour tons of effort into ensuring that they do Beat the raids and other enemies. Where "my base was overwhelmed by a raid that killed two talented colonists and kidnapped another" would be an acceptable and desirable outcome for Tynan, it's considered a complete failure for many players.

That's because you have good no way to get back what you care about, your favoured colonists. 
Yes you can raise dead some times but 90% of the time there lost if captured or are broken by getting maimed combat. 


What hurts more is that most of the logical ways to better defend like turrets, walls and cyborg killing machines in power armour just lead to bigger and more psychotic attacks.

Near endless pawns waves that will run across open ground ignoring gun fire, clearing mine fields with weight of numbers and useing there body's to block bullets, all to stab your pawns to death.

[Kanil]

This is the point of raids and the like. To throw a wrench in your story, to create conflict and loss, and to pressure you to pursue a victory condition.

Good post, makes sense.

Mentioning victory conditions gets the gears in my head turning, I think they're a good example of my frustration with Rimworld as well. The original win conditions are "build a ship at home, people show up and try to burn your ship down" and "walk half way across the planet to a ship, people show up and try to burn your ship down". I just kinda wish walking half way across the planet was the challenge, and not the end where the people show up to burn down your ship.

It just feels like all of Rimworld's stories inevitably feature "people show up and try to burn down your stuff" at some point... or really near constantly. It's fine, a game needs a focus and Rimworld's focus is base defense, I just kinda wish it wasn't.

[delphonso]

Really should be: 'people show up to snuff you out and steal your ship off planet.'

[Egan_BW]

I guess it would make sense if the game "reacted" to you focusing your resources on a strong defense with non-defense challenges, rather than "punishing" you with an even bigger wave of enemies to brute force something "interesting" to happen.

But that's easier said then done, usually combat is the simplest kind of interesting challenge to introduce and make scalable.

[Broseph Stalin]

Well there's also the fact that if the game responded to your preparations with things you hadn't prepared for the colonies where you invested time and resources into the combat side of the game would be the ones where you got to play the least of the combat side.

[EuchreJack]

So, I have now succumbed to the Rimworld Cult...

While I very much like the idea of creating bunkers that slowly expand towards a goal, ala Fallout: Tactics, the fundamental problem is that the thing you most need to do any "fun stuff" is a well-developed base. People are expendable, but the power grid, the manufactory, the hospital...that shit takes time to set up.
Even if raiders destroy 50% of it with a good attack...I still have 50% more than any other map.

I kinda like how the game is an open-and-honest story generator. The game exists to entertain the player. Simulation off-screen is faked (although I don't know how much) to create "interesting stuff". And it sort of meshes randomly in a way that us puny humans can piece it into a narrative.

For example: I did the Rich Explorer Start. On my map is an Insect Hive. The game generated a visiting group that consisted of my starting character's son and two of his buddies. They were clearly going to be pathing through the Insect Hive based upon where they entered the map. I sent my Rich Explorer and the person I hired from a nearby settlement to fight the Insects from the other direction.  My character's son died, along with his companions, but we did vanquish the insects, so there was a bit of revenge. I'm not sure how much of that was the game intentionally giving interesting stuff, or random things just coming together. And the game tends to do that regularly.