RimWorld: A sci fi colony SIM driven by an intelligent AI storyteller
rimworldgame.com
rimworldgame.com
That and the difficulty curve skyrockets the moment mechanoids or the bugs show up, and they always show up way. Too. Early. (At least now I can easily turn them off without having to make my own scenario)
I love this game but it is a frustration generator, not a story generator. And the way the creator gets about "storytelling" reminds me of how certain Hollywood directors simply can't shut up about the supposed "magic" of entertainment. Blegh.
edit- I also have a bone to pick with the way the creator ruthlessly works to eliminate anything that makes the game easier... whether its sappers that magically know exactly where to dig tunnels to get around your killbox, or artillery being gimped because it was a way to punch up a few classes with regards to some of scenarios, or turrets now ignoring prisoners/slaves turned hostile. It feels like the game that the creator wants and the game I want are dramatically different, and continuing to diverge.
Bugs never show up if you just don't expose any overhead mountain. You trigger them, not the story teller.
As for mechanoids, the "trick" so to speak for them is to lean into the gear utility & melee. You can get insanity lances very early on with trading which are excellent defense against mechanoids. And similarly a couple pawns with shield belts and blunt weapons to get up and personal with the ranged mechanoids really neutralizes them. And that's without getting into psycasts.
The difficulty curve here comes from the sheer breadth of the game rather than just outright being hard. There's a lot to learn, but the game gives you lots of ways to handle challenges.
Also raid sizes are tied largely to your colony wealth, so keeping a humble & lean base is efficient. Your colonists expectations are also driven by wealth for that matter.
> They have no chill
They do when they're drunk & stoned :) Get a good drugs policy (auto-take on low mood & enough time between doses to avoid addictions) and you'll rarely remember that mental breaks are even a thing. Chocolate doesn't hurt either.
> artillery being gimped
Artillery was made more accurate to compensate, so it's a good defense against enemy mortor raids. Just lob a few volleys before they get set up and they'll abandon that notion and charge you instead.
In my limited experience in gaming, we were reminded to periodically ask about game mechanics: "But does this make the game more fun?"
Simulating realism is cool, but reality is full of boring or unpleasant stuff. Why suffer that extra? "Oh no, it seems you cut your finger while making dinner. Now you have an infection! And since you didn't eat dinner, you are now faint and must lie down. You need a doctor! Oh no, you _were_ the doctor!"
Most recent playthrough though I just plopped Nutrient paste dispenser. Suddenly no problems with food, getting it, preparing it.
New Biotech dlc also added great value. You can make your starting pawns sleepless. So no more fussing about bedrooms at the start plus much more productivity. Mechanitor can build ton of bots that do the hauling. It's really pleasant.
Not exactly. They don't go crazy immediately. I think the 'eating without table' debuff is too harsh, but other than that... You can get away with ignoring basic pawn needs for quite a while. I want to see _you_ survive in an environment with tattered clothes, saying a friend (or pet) dying, and yes, eating raw meat without a table.
It's similar to Dwarf Fortress where tantrum spirals are a feature. Except in Dwarf Fortress things are way more deadly.
You can control the storyteller. Go with Chillax if you want more time (although that one could _still_ spawn mechanoids). Don't open ancient vaults, or go digging inside mountains if you don't want bugs.
Finishing the game is a bonus. Also now you can pack up and leave the map if it's too bad, we didn't have that option for a while.
> or go digging inside mountains if you don't want bugs.
The alternative here is to get constantly shelled by invaders because all your shit is outside. I hope you have some reinforced barrels handy!
> I want to see _you_ survive in an environment with tattered clothes, saying a friend (or pet) dying, and yes, eating raw meat without a table.
Evidently none of the colonists were ever involved in scouting... everyone knows that losing your shit is the fastest way to die in a survival situation. Much as there is a "Low expectations" buff that blunts these effects at the beginning, there needs to be "I've Learned To Live With It" or "Shrugs Shoulders" buff that takes over as the game gets going on.
Also if the dude really hates raw meat that much, he should go build himself a campfire... nothing outs useless fatalism faster than not being able to do basic things for oneself. Someone teach these offworlders some fuckin self-care!
I guess it depends on the character back stories but at least in the default scenario you're shipwrecked when the FTL starship you're on breaks up (or whatever its fate was, been a while since I played rimworld)... which implies that they're used to the comforts an interstellar civilisation can provide.
I too would be somewhat irate if I went from glitterworld comforts to scrabbling around in the mud
My go-to siege defense was to send a couple pawns with rifles to intercept the enemies the moment they appeared on the map, picking them off at range and from behind cover. By the time the raiders' supplies and artillery were ready, they would have no good defenders left, so my pawns could clean up pretty quickly. This approach required micromanagement, but consistently kept my base from taking much damage.
Once upon a time, tricking the attackers into using the wrong mortars was also possible, although I never tried it and haven't played in a year or two, so that might have changed.
Ok, this is where we see eye to eye.
If a colonist just hates something and has the means to avoid it, it should just do so. But then we run into how campfires and the cooking skill are balanced, but in general I agree.
I have put 600 hours into the game. I have never completed it without cheating, and then only to see what the end looked like - which did not inspire me to change my approach to the game.
The joy of Rimworld is in the failure, or in succeeding for a time against the odds. Maybe the author could provide options to make the game easier, to attract another segment of the game market, but the way it currently works is much more attractive to myself.
I mean, I wouldn't but...I'm also not literally designed to populate a world sold to people for entertainment purposes. At least, not that I'm aware of, and if I was, they did not do a very good job.
I've seen "Parenting Simulator" touted as an alternate title.
Though also "that's just Rimworld" is similar to "that's just X-COM (original)"
There's no shame in adjusting the settings of a single-player game to your own liking.
"Ate without a table." -5 mood for a week.
There's one that generates favorable events, another one that generates problems, another one that's random, another one that increases difficulty over time.
Mechanoids on day 0!? Sure. 5 solar eclipses in a row? Why not. Solar is overrated anyway. Can also rain gold, so...
Literally the only good way to play the game.
The only problem I have with this kind of game though is that time flies by really quickly for me with it. I think it's been 10 minutes while it's actually been an hour; next time I look at the clock it's 3am.
I only have this with games like RimWorld or SimCity (city builders, simulators) and it's actually the main reason why I play them so little. They're too "just one more thing".
So yeah, recommended but with a caveat.
My pitch to people is “if you ever wanted to play a game where your colony’s economy can be built around farming illegal drugs and turning prisoners into hats, then this is the game for you!”
My first playthrough is at 50 hours, and I still haven’t finished.
Against the Storm has also gotten me pretty badly this way.
Altough, a disclaimer is in order: Simutrans is one of those games that make time fly.
The feel is very similar to Rimworld, but the setting is that you're a spaceship's AI system, and you have a bunch of humans in stasis. The goal is to find a habitable planet for them to colonize.
Was released last month and is still in Early Access, but it's definitely in a playable state.
The asteroid fields are brutal, build your ship like an onion with thick walls ;-)
We've both sunk uncountable hours (actually we started way back in alpha 15 with a pirated copy so steam hours doesn't mean much) and done many campaigns with many mod loadouts. Yet to actually "beat" the game (it's not really the kind you "beat" though, it's very sandboxy). So entertainment/$ is astronomical.
Necesse is more similar to Terraria, but it's the game I'm enjoying most right now.
In my opinion that is AKA a poorly-made game.
I say that as someone who has ascended multiple times on Nethack, gotten deep endgame in ADOM, etc.
I got really bored with Qud and never went back.
My game will have more granular demand (not just vague "you need more commercial zones"). The player will see the interior of buildings and will be able to watch their sims live their lives.
Im working on getting version 0.2 release by Q1 2023. The game is isometric now! Working on releasing a new vlog to show it off.
I developed a new path finding algorithm to build big cities. Here's an old version of the game path finding 1,000,000 units to their own unique destinations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0HCnQqF5K4
Subreddit:
That style works particularly well with the nobility expansion.
Eh. I really love it, but I've always considered it a "Dwarf-Fortress Lite"
I want to someday start playing it, right now I'm not because: I rather play on the console laying on the couch, I'm working to much to invest in the game. It seems to have a step learning curve.
1 - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_lgEqY9K6UXUVco5XysDNAeU...
The game adapts to how well you're doing, so as they advance quickly because of their experience their challenges will escalate in difficulty as well. As a newcomer you'll advance slower so won't face as many obstacles as soon as you've seen them happen.
I mean, you'll still lose your first colony. And the next 10 after that. But each time you learn a bit more.
Also experienced RimWorld players will say things like "No, my colonists won't get chairs because those only increase Comfort by a few percent throughout the day - and that's not worth the increase in colony wealth."
Once you have "learned" RimWorld you are no longer playing a colony simulator because all the cheesy meta tactics you use make it impossible to think you are dealing with a real colony.
He's preserving their bodies by keeping them stockpiled outside in the below-zero weather and every time he eats an (uncooked, presumably still frozen solid) meal, he gets a boost to his mood! Because he has the cannibal trait so it gives him a happy thought!
In retrospect, maybe not the best show to listen to while baking pies! :)
Here’s a run exploring the games Ideology DLC playing as a tribal village.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_lgEqY9K6UVooXatQRca5Rw-...
Some people play hardcore/survival mode with hundreds of combat-related mods, others play it as a version of Stardew Valley. It is totally up to you how you want your game to be.
Starting up new colonies and getting established to the point of "yeah I can handle all the raids thrown at me at this point" is when I move on to start a new colony with a new religion/race/theme. Actually going from "solidly established colony" to "you win!" credits is I think the weakest part of RimWorld, although I haven't tried being a nomad yet which has what sounds like a way more interesting path all the way through to the victory screen.
I vaguely know that's possible, but I don't venture out a lot honestly.
It's supposed to be a pretty solid way to play as you're never that worried about raids and are consistently hitting up ancient dangers for high-end gear.
It would be ok, but I don't like to assign them to jobs. Even with Dwarf Therapist.
Rimworld colonies (even large ones) tend to have less migrants than even a single DF migration wave, so it's manageable.
Rimworld is complex, but it always leaves me wanting more. Especially z-levels.
Wanna lead a team of misogynistic cannibals? You can. Wanna be a mad scientist that extracts the brain of his prisoners to create deadly robots? You can. Wanna build a village of drug-friendly pacifists? You can.
What's fantastic about this game is how many things are optional. You don't have to care about climbing the ladder of the empire if you don't want to. You don't need to build the space ship. You don't need to go to war with your neighbors.
Two big "flaws". The AI can sometimes throw at you problems that are too hard, like enemies to strong as it not always estimate correctly your strength, which brings me to the biggest flaw of the game: combat.
Your characters can literally throw themselves into enemy fire and need a lot of micromanagement for combat. Worse, the combat model is such that a guy in a power armor can be defeated by tribesmen with bows and arrows, that's because projectiles and armor isn't really simulated entirely.
An extension called "combat extended" attempts to remedy this, but I find it has its own problems.
That's me being pedantic, the game is incredible, go for if the idea of building your own base and story is attractive to you.
Its just feels like instead of playing the game I must combat it.
Much more annoying are the suits (and now, gas masks). If you are not careful with settings they will drop them elsewhere, or will enter the perfectly breathable base with suits still on.
>We don't share any tools. Chris at IV has his own tech foundation; I built this one on Unity.
>But they do look somewhat similar; that's my fault. I'm not a good enough artist to come up with a really good original look. There are only so many ways to render characters on a tiny grid without using animations.
>I hope the differences between the game will be enough for people to look past the aesthetic similarities. And if I get some funding at some point I can get an artist to help develop a more unique look.
>I do think the similarities are skin-deep. In gameplay the game resembles DF much more than PA.
– Tynan, creator of Rimworld
Last, the other point of keeping things as relatively abstracted icons is that it forces players to tell the story in their mind and create emotion from there, where the player fills in the blanks themselves.
In that game, if I get raided, then I try to capture as many as possible. If they have crappy skills, I'll just harvest their organs and turn their skin into leather to make sand bags. If they have good skills, I'll feed them the leftover human meat from the organ harvesting until I eventually convince them to join my cause.
The story teller is a very advanced and configurable difficulty scaling system that enables different styles of play. Mods even add in new story tellers to change the game focus entirely.
Cassandra always tries to push you to 5 colonists. The events she chooses are separate from the difficulties or quality of the events.
Roguelikes with random events have easy mode the same way, if they think you're falling behind the curve you're given events and powerups, they decrease if they think you're doing well. Because events are random this is easy to tune for the ideal difficulty.
I think most people respond much better to the idea of "storyteller" than "scaling difficulty" though, so it's an important innovation at least in terms of framing.
They're not the same.
different narrators are more difficult than others.
As far as the whole 'intelligent AI' thing. Eh, not really. It's a (small) set of conditions that determines the timing of the next event, the difficulty/magnitude of the event, and whether or not the event will be positive/negative/neutral; plenty of games have had such systems without marketing them as 'intelligent AI storytellers'.
The game is great though. I've sunk way too many hours into it.
It would basically look at what your team was doing. If a member decided to just go solo and do their own thing the AI would throw some mob that required a teammate to get rid of. If the team started having too many difficulties it would tone down the number of zombies and their placement. Etc
Think of "AI" as "game AI", not "machine learning". We have called NPC behavior "AI" in games even when they were simple decision trees.
Dwarf Fortress was looking into offload fluid computation to other cores, not sure if it was done.
I don’t often play very far into the insane late endgame though (200+ colonists/raiders on the map at once etc). I could easily see it being a problem at that point.
Easily one of my favorite games of all time. Do not let the graphics and dense UI turn you off. It's worth the effort.
Put another way, I don't remember any specific events in Rimworld, but I'm more than happy to tell you about the dwarf who pathologically elected to engrave the walls of the fortress exclusively with depictions of a particularly delicious piece of cheese he ate.
[0] https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/294100/view/34221999...