The Fall of Paleal - A Rimworld Dynasty

[Critch]

I had thought about trying out a Rimworld dynasty about my current game but the settlement in that game was pretty severely humped by an ill-timed insectoid infestation incident. I posted a supposed-to-be one-off glimpse in the "Glimpses and Moments from Undynastied" thread detailing the virtually definite end of my settlement. There was a little interest expressed in a Rimworld dynasty, so here we are.

Rimworld
"RimWorld is a sci-fi colony sim driven by an intelligent AI storyteller. Inspired by Dwarf Fortress, Firefly, and Dune." That's what it says on the Rimworld Steam store page, sums it up pretty nicely. It's not the prettiest game, it's all 2d and pixelly, little pawns shuffle around carrying out their orders, but it's deep with lots of options and things to build, and a wide variety of threats to overcome. It's also a modders-delight, steam workshop has mods for everything, although I'm playing totally vanilla. I don't like mods that mess with the balance of the game.

The base game was released 10 years ago, even now the developer rarely allows sales so the basegame is still $35. So all in all it's not cheap. There are also three DLCs adding depth: Royalty (adds an Empire and feudalism), Ideology (adds religion), and Biotech (adds genetic modification and children). This is my first playthrough with the DLCs, it's a learning experience really. I'm not really sure how much the DLCs add but I've bought them as they were released meaning to get back into Rimworld but haven't until now..

The story so far:
Paleal was a little settlement of 10 people, almost four (in-game) years old and fairly secure. It started out with three survivors crashlanding in a hilly temperate forest, they then built a small shelter up against a hill for themselves, fought off a few raids, completed a few queasts, and slowly built up their settlement. Of the original three survivors two (Ironhead and Maisie) were still around leading the settlement but the first camp leader Manju was kidnapped a few years ago by refugees who turned out to be untrustworthy. She's never been heard of again but she might be out there somewhere, who knows.

There was also a dog when they first landed, no idea where it went.

The Paleal central building was a jumble of rooms cluttered around the original shelter, all roofed and linked by narrow corridors. I didn't really do any planning, it was all very cluttered organic growth, rooms added on as needed. The central building had a main room with tables for dining ("Ate Without A Table" is a regular mood debuff meme in Rimworld Reddit), there was a basic hospital, every inhabitant had their own bedroom, there was a classroom for teaching the kids, a tv room for recreation, and a number of production room. A tailors bench, a stonecutter's bench, a machining room, a smelter. There was also a kitchen with a large freezer room attached and 500 meals stored, more than enough for winter. Everything was powered by a windturbine and solar panels with backup generators to switch on when needed (ie when it wasnt windy or sunny enough for wind/solar). There was also a newly-built geothermal generator over a steam guyser. So power had no issues other than the occassional electical fire.

Around the central building there were fields growing rice, potatoes, cotton and corn. Add in meat from hunting the local wildlife when available and Paleal was more than self sufficient for food. The whole settlement was walled, only one well-defended doorway in and out, and the settlers armed with rifles, shotguns and a single SMG. All was going well, the inhabitants were fed, they could manufacture weapons and clothing, everything was as good as being on a nasty planet's surface could be.

I think Paleal could be kindly described as a fairly comfortable, self-sufficient warren.

That's where it all went wrong, an 8-year-old boy turned up looking for shelter but with insectoids following him that the settlement would have to fight off. Big armored insects, not cute little bugs. We could have closed the doors and left him to cope on his own, but Paleal was going with the theme of being a sanctuary for anybody who needed it, so he was allowed in. That was a disaster, the insectoids popped up through the ground right in the middle of the central building maze and now almost everybody is dead and most of the compound has burnt down. I armed one settler with an incendiary grenade launcher to burn the insectoid hives, that would have worked ok if they hadn't popped through in a room with wooden floors and walls.

The current situation:
Paleal is down to one healthy inhabitant: Honey, a 13 year old pacifist. She's genetically engineered to be a concubine, beautiful, kind, delicate and charming but incapable of violence. She's hiding in a bedroom on the edge of settlement, all the food burned during the insectoid attack, so she's slowly munching her way through the corpse of one of the dead colonists. She's eaten a leg so far, so she's well fed but despondent about eating human flesh. Not that despondent though, this is the second body she has eaten, she polished off the 8-year-old refugee's body first. (Spoiler, there's actually one other survivor I hadn't noticed, Paleal's population is about to boom to 2. But not for long.)

Fortunately the infestation hives have all been destroyed, the fires destroyed them, so there will be no more insectoids popping up. There's only the stragglers to worry about. Insectoids come in three sizes (megaspiders - big, armored and mean, spelopede - medium and fast, scarab - small and faster), generally the bigger they are the more of a challenge they are. There are 1 big and 3 medium left wandering around. Not too much but way more than an unarmed teenage pacifist can cope with.

So the plan is to write this dynasty until the settlement's gruesome end. Not sure how many posts that'll take.

[JonInMiddleGA]

I will simply note that your original post resulted in me opening Rimworld for the first time in just over a year.

[Critch]

That's the way I go with it too. Takes over for a while but when a game ends it goes back on the shelf for a year. I find the early game, the initial setup, a bit dull so it's difficult to get into a new game when I've killed off one settlement.

And now an update.

An Update
So Honey was hiding in a bedroom in the South West corner of the settlement, the center was wrecked thanks to destructive insectoids wandering about breaking everything and the fire that was caused by the incendiary grenade launcher, but Honey's little refuge was intact. Three bedrooms, a stonemason room and a research desk all standing and since the wind turbine was right outside and the wiring intact the rooms were still powered. The heaters will be required in the rapidly approaching winter. Food was ok for the moment, she still had most of Ironhead's body to eat, the main problem was that Honey was a strong Ideo-ideologist (the Paleal religion) so she was strongly religiously opposed to eating human flesh. Munching on Ironhead's corpse was keeping her alive but causing a major mood debuff. Added to all the death, destruction and general hardship Honey was normally on the verge of some kind of mental breakdown, swinging wildly between tantrums and catharsis. She'd had a destructive tantrum that destroyed the medical supplies indirectly causing Ironhead's death as there was nothing to treat the wound infection that killed him. And now she was eating his corpse.

The Ideology DLC added religion, this is my first playthrough with the DLC so the Paleal religion is about as basic as can be. No cannibalism, no slavery, no child labor, no drugs, monogamous marriages, no self-mutilation, no organ harvesting, and everybody working for the common good. Church of Ideo-ideology (game generated name), everybody who joined the settlement was pestered by the settlement's religious leader until they converted. Membership had dropped dramatically what with all the deaths, deaths that included the religion's leader La, she got sliced and diced by an armored bug. That's how liberal the religion was, it had a lady divorcee pope, she was Ironhead's ex-wife.

The Return of Takashi
In the other thread I pronounced Takashi dead probably eaten by bugs, but it turned out reports of his death were greatly exaggerated. He'd bravely limped out with a shotgun to face off against the remaining insects but I lost track of him and assumed he was dead. Turns out he'd bravely approached the insectoids, bravely dropped his shotgun and ran away, then bravely had a catatonic breakdown and collapsed into a fetal position coma. I guess the insectoids ignored him as no threat once he collapsed, he'd lain there for two days before I noticed. While the insects slept, Honey sneaked out and dragged him back to safety, cured his malnutrition by feeding him chunks of Ironhead's leg and generally cared for his injuries. The leg she fed Takashi must've been the one with the infection that killed Ironhead though, Takashi got severe food poisoning from it and almost died. Coma plus projectile vomit isn't a great combo. It wasn't enough to revive him from his catatonia though, he slept through the whole period. So Paleal was up to two inhabitants, one a pacifist and one in a coma.

Inhabitant Number Three - Gumby
The last time I played the best way to get new inhabitants was to wait for the local savage faction to raid, then search through the injured that had been left behind to see if any of them were worth recruiting. Capture the good ones, nurse them back to health, put them in a cell and have your warden hit them with the "you know, wouldn't you be happier living here with regular meals and your own bed?" hard sell. That doesn't work for Paleal, the local savage tribe have a religion that worships hard drugs, they always show up with an addiction and a withdrawal that'll lead to coma and death. Rather than capture the injured savages now Paleal either leaves the injured to bleed out, gets a pawn with either "blood thirsty" or "psychopath" trait to wander around finishing them off, or occasionally captures one of them to nurse back to health to be the star of a public execution. The Paleal religion might be fairly soft on a lot of things, but I chose "execution of the guilty admired" so the adherents love it when a guilty nonbeliever gets his throat cut at the alter. Puts a smile on everybody's face for days.

Without that recruitment option, Paleal has to take recruits anyway it can.

There was a message that Gumby was fleeing two man-eating rats and needed shelter. There were no further details, maybe he'd be a trained Empire soldier with armor and a big gun? Turned out he was not, he was another "Incapable of violence" type. I guess that explained why he was running from two rats. He was also not very bright, he got lost on the way to the compound and the rats killed him. Oh well, no great loss. Officially he was an inhabitant of Paleal but he never actually made it to town.

God speed Gumby, we hardly knew you.

Hungry Hungry Honey
Takashi was still catatonic so Honey was feeding both of them with the remains of Ironhead. After finishing off both legs, Honey made the unusual decision that the next best bit to eat was his head so that was ripped off and eaten like a big meat coconut. The arms went next and with both of them eating it was not long until Ironhead was almost all gone. Honey headed out and skirted all the way round the town avoiding main corridors to get to the bodies of Kysott and Maisie. They'd both been lying out in the open for a couple of weeks so both were a bit overripe to eat.

If there's one thing that makes inhabitants sad, it's colonists bodies lying unburied so Kysott and Maisie would need to be taken care of, Gumby too since he was lying outside.

Food was the priority though, if the bodies were off the menu the only other option was to get to the fields and harvest rice. There be insects in the fields though so it was a slow process for Honey. She'd harvest a little, she'd see a bug, she'd scream and run away to cower in hiding until she was brave enough to go back to the fields, then the rotation would start all over again. Eventually she had enough rice to feed herself and Takashi, raw rice doesn't sound very appetizing but all the human flesh was gone so they had to eat what they had.

Takashi the Hero
Eventually Takashi came out of his catatonic state, his couple of weeks in a coma being tended had let all his insect bites and slashes heal up too. Almost all, he'd lost an eye and it wasn't going to heal up. He was a bit unsteady on his feet, but he was as good as he was getting.

The most powerful faction on the planet is the Empire of Eternity. They're technologically advanced and a bit dismissive of everybody else but occasionally they'll offer a reward if you do something for them. Early on in the game one of their Lords was attacked near Paleal and he was given shelter, that got us an "orbital bombardment targeter" as a reward. Mark a spot with it and press the button and an Empire satellite will bombard the area from space. Desperate times called for desperate measures. It was risky, I'd never used one before so I was not sure how destructive it would be or how big an area it would hit, it was a good time to find out. It was safely locked away waiting for the day a raid turned up armed with mortars and sat outside the walls lobbing in shells, but it was needed now.

Takashi limped out with the targeter in his pocket, stealthily sneaked into the burnt out center of the camp and spotted the one remaining large insectoid smashing walls with two of the medium sized bugs. He pointed the targeter where they were standing, it was all done line of sight and the wall limited where he could target, and then he pressed the button. The orbital bombardment did everything it was advertised to do, flattened walls, obliterated bugs, started a few fires. When the bombardment ended there was nothing left of the two medium sized bugs and the large armored one was cracked open and dead.

Unfortunately also dead was Takashi, he was caught in the blast and his innards had turned to gloop. He died a hero, his name will live as long as the settlement exists, maybe two weeks.

So we're back to Honey being the only inhabitant and this time Takashi won't be returning, his body is lying in the middle of the compound. That'll be another grave needed.

[Chas in Cinti]

OMG this is the greatest and worst thing I've ever read... too awesome

[Critch]

It's strange how it's gone. First four years would have been a Farming and Construction simulator but since things have started going wrong it's been one thing after another. So here goes:

First an update on something from above. I said that there used to be a camp dog but I didn't know where it had went, remembered now. He was Ironhead's dog, he died pretty early of natural causes and Ironhead vanished to bed for a week heartbroken. Ironhead was the top man in camp, he built almost everything and kept everybody safe, but he was sickly and delicate so any infection or upset and he'd vanish to bed for a week or two. He was the infirmary's top customer, which wasn't ideal because he was also the doctor. When his ex-wife turned up and rejected him all over again he fell apart for a month. And now he's been eaten.

Four Funerals and a Kidnapping - Part One
As mentioned above the inhabitants were always on the verge of a mental break, Takashi with his catatonic break down, Honey with her temper tantrums and dazed wanderings. Each pawn's mood screen was full of negative debuffs (not Takashi anymore, he's now in death's calm embrace so his mood screen is empty), death and destruction and unburied friends lying around the neighborhood would do that to people I guess. Time would heal most of the sadness, but burials would be needed for the unburied friend problem. There were four dead colonists lying around, Ksott rotting away in front of the religious alter, Maisie lying in the tree field (wood is a easy fuel source so there was a large section of trees), Takashi fairly fresh in the remains of the main room, and Gumby just outside the walls. They'd all need to be taken care of to improve mood and cut down on mental breaks.

Luckily the orbital bombardment had helped out a little, every cloud has a silver lining. The initial bombardment took care of Ksott (Funeral 1- obliterated), and then set the rows of trees alight too so Maisie (Funeral 2 - cremation) are both gone. Apparently a destroyed body counts as buried, even Ironhead didn't get a mention now that the last bit has been devoured. I'm sure he's still remembered with every burp though.

Save the Cheerleader, Save the World
With Honey back to being the only inhabitant it was time for a move to keep her safe from the one remaining bug. The north section of Paleal was a fairly new expansion, walled off from the rest of the settlement and only connected by a couple of steel doors. She'd be safe from the one remaining insectoid if she was in there, so long as the bug didn't dig through the wall. There was a geothermal generator providing power, a field of corn, and beds in the cell block so that section had everything she'd need other than heating. Heating would be a problem eventually as she had the choice of wearing Ironhead's old clothes (mood debuff - wearing clothes somebody died in), or going naked (mood debuff - naked and cold) but that was a future problem so all ok until Winter. She'd settled on a dead-mans clothes outdoors/no clothes indoors happy medium, it helped a little with the mood debuffs.

She settled into a little rota of harvesting corn, eating corn and patching damage to the walls during the day, and sleeping nights. A bit of boring normality returned. One thing about being the only person left was that she had got quite competent at a few tasks; medical, construction, cooking. She was still terrible at handling the crops though, she'd botch the harvest about 65% of the time and get no produce. She was still rated 0 for crops, apparently the dainty highborn types have an aversion to working the land.

Good News/Bad News
Good news - before the insectoid infestation started the colonists had set up a couple of traps where the insectoids were predicted to turn up, the remaining insectoid had wandered into that area and triggered a trap ripping off one of it's legs. It wandered back into the main section of Paleal bleeding until it collapsed through blood loss. It was unconscious but the wound and blood loss seemed to be slowly healing, looked like it was regenerating, but for the moment it was out for the count.

Bad news - Honey got Malaria. With medical supplies and a medic that would mean some bed rest and drugs and back to normal, but on her own with no medical supplies it was just wait and see. A race between the disease and immunity, first to 100% wins. Luckily the corn was stored in her room so she could feed herself without going too far from bed and without having to get dressed in the tainted clothing. Before the result of her Malaria was decided, she had another mental break and wandered off in a dazed stupor. It was late fall, temperatures were below zero and she wasn't wearing the dead-man's clothes, suddenly hypothermia had entered the race to finish her off. When night fell the temperature dropped and Honey collapsed naked and unconscious.

Surely this is the end?

How's that for a cliffhanger? If this was a Netflix series this would be the point it got canceled so nobody ever found out what happened next.

[Critch]

When I was a kid I used to watch the original 1930s Flash Gordon cinema series on tv (they were reruns, I'm not quite old enough to have watched it first time around), they'd put any old rubbish on during the day during school holidays. Every episode would end with Flash facing certain death, then next episode something implausible would happen to save him. That's what's about to happen for Honey and Paleal. I remember once on Flash Gordon the episode ended with Flash being thrown off a tower by Ming, next episode started with him wrestling and escaping and not being thrown, that was cheating. Even as a kid I lost all respect for the series when it cheated like that.

Anyway, back on topic and at the end of the last thrilling episode we left Honey, the final Paleal survivor, lying unconscious and dying of hypothermia and/or malaria in the freezing night air. The fate of the settlement rested on her survival.

The Man in Black
If you ever get to the point where you have no colonists conscious there's a chance that an event will trigger sending a lone gunman to rush in and help you, a single Man in Black. He's pretty random but he'll always be able to shoot, he'll be dressed all in black and wearing a flak jacket, and he'll be armed with a six-shooter. He'll bring some food and medicine too normally. Whenever I've had a man in black turn up in other games it's always been too late to make any difference, just another dead body to add to the pile. This time though he turned up bang on time.

I'd pretty much given up on him showing up, if he's meant to turn up when things are hopeless he should have been here weeks ago, but moments after Honey hit the deck there he was, rushing towards the town with his revolver in hand. His name was Klein and he rushed into Paleal, headed straight to the downed insectoid and finished it off with a couple of shots (thereby ending the insectoid infestation), then rushed into the north of the camp and scooped up Honey in his obviously manly arms. Rather than take her back to her bed in the unheated cell block he rushed her down to the original refuge on the other side of the settlement, the one with heated bedrooms. He tucked her into bed in a room heated to 73 (Fahrenheit obviously, not centigrade), fed her, then strolled off to another heated bedroom to sleep the sleep of the just knowing he'd saved the day.

What a guy.

In an old game I had a Man in Black that turned up, ran into the town, saw the carnage and promptly dropped dead with a heart attack. Klein was much better than that guy.

Four Funerals and a Kidnapping - Part Two
A few days bed rest for Honey and her Malaria immunity had hit 100% and her hypothermia had cleared, she was out of trouble and just about back to normal. Klein was a gunman and pretty much nothing else, he was charming and kind (strange traits for a gunman, a killer with a heart) but not much use for every day tasks. He wasnt able to do skilled labor, he wouldnt haul things, he couldnt farm, he couldnt cook. There was a real separation of duties between them, Klein took care of anything that needed a gun (and a little bit of cleaning) and Honey took care of everything else. Together they started to get the settlement back on it's feet, Klein cleared the floor in the wreckage that used to be the freezer, Honey rebuilt the freezer walls, built a campfire for cooking, cooked corn and rice simple meals, harvested rice and corn, dug a couple of graves for Gumby and Takashi and buried Takashi (Funeral 3 - Burial). I'm not sure why but Gumby couldn't be buried, normally you right click a dug grave and select who to put in it but Gumby didn't show up on the list. It's always good to have a spare grave, I guess. Be prepared.

The "colonist left unburied" mood debuff still showed for Gumby's body but he couldn't be buried so Klein solved the issue by dragging him further away from the camp and setting him on fire with the incendiary grenade launcher. Hey presto, no Gumby (Funeral 4 - Explosive cremation). With that the body clean-up was complete, one thing crossed off the mood debuff list.

Things were starting to calm down with all the insectoids gone, the settlement was mainly wrecked but safe now, there were some crops in the fields although they were starting to die with the early winter drop in temperatures but survival seemed at least possible now. The main outstanding risk was what would happen at the first raid from an unfriendly tribe. Raid strength is based on the wealth of your colony, they'll throw more tribesman at you if they think there's a good reward waiting. Paleal may be wrecked but there's still a pile of silver lying in the undamaged storeroom. The colony's wealth was a third of what it was before the insectoids hit, but it's still a lot for only one guy with a gun to defend.

The First Raid
In early winter the first post-insectoid raid happened, an unfriendly Impid tribe nearby sent a squad to attack. And it didn't look to bad, just a one-man raid, a little red impid with horns and a bow and arrow, surely that wouldn't be too difficult for Klein to fight off? Klein waited in ambush for the impid to get close, he was armed with the camp shotgun now so would be out-ranged by a bow so had to get as close as possible. He fired first, and that's when I found out that impid's have a close range weapon, they can spit fire. All the non-human variants were added by the Biotech DLC so this was a first for me, I didn't know they could do that, last time they raided the colonists were packing rifles and killed them all at long range. Klein responded to having fire spat at him as anybody would. He caught fire and screamed, dropped his shotgun and then he ran outside and collapsed. The impid decided that kidnapping Klein would be a successful raid, he put out the flames and carried off the unconscious Fire-Damaged Man in Black. That's the kidnapping that ends Four Funerals and a Kidnapping (which was meant to be a Rimworld play on Four Wedding and a Funeral. Which is actually a surprisingly entertaining movie).

Maybe they'll ransom him back, maybe they'll sell him, maybe they'll eat him, no idea yet, there has been no ransom demand yet.

Another episode ends with Honey as the only colonist in Paleal. At least she's still alive.

[Chas in Cinti]

OK, I'm going to have to get this game I think...

[Critch]

Make sure you watch a youtube of it first, the basegame is 10 years old and it wasn't cutting edge then. Make sure it's not too ugly for you. And if you do buy, the basegame is a fine game on its own, Royalty DLC doesn't really add much but the other two add nice little changes.

And on with the story:

For a short while Paleal is back to one colonist, the pacifist Honey, so desperate measures were needed to plan for the next raid. Namely a panic room. One of the bedrooms was updated to have double thick walls and double doors, if a raid happens Honey will grab some food and run and hide there. Hopefully any raiders will take what they want and leave and hopefully they wouldn't set fire to too many things before going. Particularly the panic room.

There had been no word on Klein yet, he hadn't escaped and there was no ransom demand, but one good bit of news is that the Savage Impid Tribe that kidnapped him are all vegetarian, they're animal worshipers and wont eat any meat so at least they wont have eaten him. Less good news for him is that they're down with slavery and also have no problem at all with executing non-Impids. I'm going to consider Klein missing in action, probably never to be seen again.

Omemenia Calls
Paleal has one friend, a nearby faction of survivalist traders. Over the years a good number of their trade caravans have passed by and Paleal has always made a point of trading something with them just to seem neighborly. Friend is too strong really but they're not hostile so that's better than most of the other factions. They send a message that they had a task for Paleal, they had an anthropologist who was traveling around observing how other tribes lived on the rim and he'd like to visit and observe. He wouldn't help out, just a interested observer. If Paleal gave him food and board for 16 days they would send a reward, the reward being a colonist. That sounded good so I clicked accept without really reading all the details.

The anthropologist turned up, he was called Gerbil and he was temporarily bed-bound due to paralytic abasia, he would need to be carried to a bed, would stay tucked up for two weeks and then would have to be carried back to the shuttle to depart. That was all in the task details I didn't read. Also in there was that the colonist they would send as a reward, Roach, was a very neurotic, drug-addicted, pyromaniac. She would have mental breaks frequently and when she did she'd burn things. I can see why they were willing to give her up.

She'd be more trouble than she was worth so I canceled the quest, so now Paleal was giving room and board to Gerbil for two plus weeks for no reward.

Gerbil was a 32 year old male and he was quickly totally besotted with Honey ("charming" and "physically stunning" are in the 13 year-old's description). My backup plan was to have Honey romance him so he would stay, he'd be useful when he was over his bed-bound issue, but Honey being 13 meant she was marked as "too young to romance" so Gerbil wasn't interested. (note - there is a infamous mod called RJW (aka The Forbidden Mod) that would remove the "too young to romance" issue, but it's too extreme for my game. It also removes the "too furry to romance" and the "too dead to romance" issues and lots of other icky tweaks too, each to their own I guess).

Gerbil was really not having a good time, Honey was too busy to feed him and there was a solar flare so the camp lost power too, he'd spend his days hungry and lying on his own in a dark freezing room. Things got so bad he forgot he was bed ridden and got up to make himself a meal, with that he regained the ability to walk. That was strange, I guess canceling the task had messed with things. He also earned his keep by going outside with the camp shotgun and killing a bison that was running amok, it was sausages for dinner all winter. I thought the bison would kill him and leave one less mouth to feed through the winter, but this worked too.

Gerbil's Departure
From then on Gerbil was put to work, no more lying around taking notes about the way Paleal lives. He was quite good at construction so he was tasked with repairing walls around the settlement while Honey cooked up corn and bison meat meals.

Two days before he was due to leave and return to his own tribe there was a one-man raid, Honey ran and hid in her panic room after picking up a few days meals as planned while Gerbil strolled out with the camp shotgun to defend against one savage with a sword. It was a Rimworld version of a wookie, a Yttakin. Big strong and furry, a human genetically engineered to work on frozen mining worlds.

We don't have to worry about Gerbil giving his Paleal visit a negative review when he got home because the savage cut off his legs and he bled to death. The savage left without stealing anything, he just carried off Gerbil's body thereby saving Honey the bother of burying him. the Yttakin tribe apparently like to decorate their settlement with skulls on spikes, so that'll be Gerbil's final resting place.

Gerbil left Paleal as he arrived, being carried because he was unable to walk.

It's starting to look like the task of looking after Honey is a bit of a poisoned chalice. On a more positive note, now she's on her own she's got enough food to keep her fed through winter.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Critch

And if you do buy, the basegame is a fine game on its own, Royalty DLC doesn't really add much but the other two add nice little changes.

I only have Ideology from the DLCs and while it's fine, I'd definitely echo your advice on going basegame only initially. The DLCs add some flavor and playstyle twists but until you're far enough along to see how the game suits you, they're really kinda overkill.

Don't bother with them until you're getting bored on your 20th or 30th run with the vanilla basically.

Fwiw of course.

[Critch]

Yeah, Ideology seems to be the best of the DLC. Biotech seems to be mainly late game changes (other than the human variants) and I found Royalty mainly annoying so actively avoid most of it's options. With Royalty you can attain titles for your colonists from the Empire. All that really means is that your pawn will complain more about the furniture in their bedroom, not the kind of room a Lord should be living in. In return they'll get psychic powers that I always forget to use anyway.

So basegame is bestgame when cost is included.

And on with the story:

Looking back at the logs Gerbil didnt get his legs cut off with a sword, he got them crushed and destroyed with a big spiky club. Pity, Honey could have eaten them if they'd been cut off but they were just a dangly, stringy mush at the end of his stolen corpse when he was dragged away. His faction were also less than impressed when they sent a shuttle to bring him home and got the news that he was now an ornament stuck on a skull spike at a hostile tribe's camp.

Yet Another Useless Arrival
Not long after the whole Gerbil incident a new Paleal resident turned up. He didn't ask if he could stay, he just turned up and said "I live here now." He was a runaway, a refugee from a Yttakin camp, a little furry boy. His name was Shaott, a 6 year-old packing a revolver. He's rated 0 for shooting but he would still be the first line of defense since he brought his own gun. It's probably not worth getting to know him, he'll be dead soon. One problem with Shaott was that he had the Yttakin religion, so he wouldn't eat meat or kill animals. If a raid didn't kill him being a picky eater might have, but luckily he accidentally ate a bison sausage and his religious certainty dropped from "fanatical" to "I'm not sure I believe any of this rubbish". He may be the first person to convert to a new religion just for the sausages.

Things calmed down for a while, the days were taken up with Honey in class teaching the new kid Rim skills, which sounds like the kind of thing that would get a teacher arrested. Luckily the classroom with desks and a blackboard was one of the few rooms that survived the fires and bugs intact. When not teaching in class, Honey did basic maintenance around the camp and reattached the main power circuit with the geothermal generator in the north ending the power blackout problems. Just like in real life six year olds are useless parasites, so all Shaott did when not in class was wander around and draw chalk pictures on the ground. Occasionally, very occasionally, he would do some cleaning. Parts of the camp were still covered in old gore, human and insectoid blood on the floors and up the walls so there was plenty of cleaning to do.

Nom-nom-nominous
At the start of Spring food became the main issue. The camp didn't have much and what it did have was starting to rot, Honey had been ordered to rebuild the freezer room during the winter season but had never completed it. That wasn't a problem in winter when it was below freezing outside so all the vents could be opened to let the freezing outside air in, but it was spring and the temperatures were rising so the "freezer" room was heating up. Honey needed to boost her construction skills to build cooler units, that was why she hadn't completed the freezer in the winter, she didn't have the skills. A quick course of rebuilding walls around the camp to boost her construction skills and she could build the coolers. Nothing teaches electronics like building a wall. With Shaott being Yttakin, a variety of furry humans genetically engineered to work on frozen planets, the moment the freezer got to -3 celsius he vanished off to the freezer and spent most of his time in their drawing on the floor. The game is good for little details like that.

With it being spring the camp should have been a hive of crop planting activity but Honey (on account of being too good to get her hands dirty) and Shaott (on account of being 6 years old) were both hopeless. Planting was slow going, and made slower by a wild animal that was inside the settlement. A Boomalope was walking free inside the walls, a large antelope/cow like creature but rather than milk Boomalopes produce chemfuel. They explode in a fireball when they die so they're a problem to get rid off. They're also a problem in that Honey and Shaott would slowly plant a few rice plants each day and the moment the rice sprouted the Boomalope would eat them.

So starvation might be a good bet in the "what eventually kills off Paleal" sweepstakes.

Defense is the Best Form of Defense
In the olden days when Paleal was up and running as a functioning settlement there was a colonist called Daniel. In his pre-stranded-on-Rimworld life he'd been a scientist and was as smart as a bag of foxes. He didn't like being outdoors (I cant remember what the trait is called, but he had it) so he spent all his time indoors at his research desk or in his bedroom which was next door to his research room. Thanks to Daniel's diligence, Paleal had rushed through a lot of the early tech tree and had a big pile of techs they could use. When the insectoids turned up Daniel didn't have a gun, he wasn't keen on using guns so he held the line as a melee combatant cracking insectoids with his hammer. Obviously he was one of the first dead and his body burned up in the fires too. But a sooty stain on the floor wasn't the only mark he left on the colony, his research was still available. The research desk was still there covered in his papers, so Paleal knew how to build automatic mini-turrets, auto-guns on stationary tripods that could be set up to defend points.

When Rimworld first came out, mini-turrets were the meta. Build a row of them and raids would melt. In my first few attempts playing the game responding to a raid would mean sending out the colonists to man the barricades but the raid would have to get past the mini-turret line first so unless it was a fair-sized raid the colonists would come back complaining about being cold and hungry but without having fired a shot. Mini-turrets would deal with most front-on raids on their own, anything that actually got as far as the colonists would be seriously softened up. They've been nerfed now, lower fire rate, less damage and more repairs after firing, but with Honey's construction book-learning she could now build them. She built a couple to protect the Paleal front door, doing some kind of mental gymnastics that as a pacifist shooting somebody was wrong but building an auto-turret to shoot them for you was completely ok. So at least the next raid wont come in completely unopposed, the town would not have to depend on a gun-toting toddler.

One problem with mini-turrets is that they need to be powered, any disruption to the power supply and they'll turn off. So better hope the next raid doesn't turn up during a solar flare or other electrical problem.

(As an aside with my one long-term settlement (27 years before it eventually got wiped out) the beginning of the end was when the auto-turrets failed due to an electrical problem. The population was about twenty, but half of them were out of camp on a trade-caravan to another settlement when a pack of man-eating polar bears turned up. The half who were out on the caravan were the ones who could fight too, the weaklings were the ones left safely at home with the auto-turrets to defend them. With no mini-turret defenses the bears stormed the camp and killed almost everybody. When the caravan came back the bears had moved on but only one colonist had survived the attack. That was Doc, the imaginatively named camp doctor, she was torn up and had lost a leg but was still just about alive. The strange thing was she was a masochist so she got a mood boost from pain, she was having the best time possible being in agony after being torn apart with bear claws. The pain gave her the highest positive mood I've seen a colonist have.)

[Chas in Cinti]

ok, I know we hopped into this from the Undynasty thread... but I would be interested in seeing a full dynasty report to see what actually happens when you're not 2 pre-pubescents running from one tragedy to the next... LOL