Rimworld

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The universe maybe completely different from Dwarf Fortress, but the inhabitants are just as equally retarded.

Rimworld is what happens when Dwarf Fortress, Firefly, Dune, WH40k (think somewhere between Age of Terra and Dark Age of Technology), and several other space operas had an intense orgy and this is the result. She's prettier than her predecessor, but doesn't necessarily have the same depth...at least at first. Playable alphas were released sometime in 2013, and the game was released in full late 2018. Primarily designed by Tynan Sylvester (who wants you to buy his books). The main objective of the game is to manage a dwarven fortress space colony until one can escape the hellhole in a spaceship. Or they can choose to make their colony viable enough that it can participate in galactic society at large.

The sci-fi setting allows for elements that dwarf fortress can't have (though the toady one can find a way to include most of them). Some of these elements include but are not limited to: forceful organ harvesting, cannibalism, catching carcinomas from toxic fallout, cargo pods dropping on your favorite thing, swarms of super beavers capable of leveling entire forests, exploding deer, exploding rats, people going on murder sprees simply because they have no bed, and pirate-killing turkeys. And that is with just the vanilla game!

The game has become celebrated as insanely moddable, and there are literally thousands of mods offering everything from new weapons and furniture, UI improvements, new factions and storytellers, aesthetic improvements, and completely new mechanics. With a few free mods, it can be practically a different game.

WIP

Overview

In the distant future, a space accident causes colonists to be stranded upon a rimworld, an inhabited but backward feral world at the rim of known space. The world is procedurally generated and differs each time you start a game. In Tynan's fluff, humanity is fuck-old by this time: seriously, so much so that you literally dig up steel and electronic components like they're sedimentary rock. The objective is primarily to survive; if you manage that, then you can think about getting richer or even getting off the world.

By default, you start with 3 colonists out of 8 potential choices, and tweak your chosen rimworld and landing site to your liking. Along with a pet and just enough resources to build some rudimentary shelter, your main objective is to build a spaceship and return to the stars, or you can just rough it in the wilderness and try to flourish. Later updates added some additional starting scenarios;

• A quintet of tribals who barely survive an attack from murderous machines (a couple of extra hands sure, but you'll be stuck with a research speed penalty for the rest of the run),
• A single colonist who leaves the comfort of high technology to strike it rich in the rim (only one guy, but at least you can build gun turrets right off the bat and start with a blaster rifle), or
• One unfortunate schmuck who's left for dead in his birthday suit and nothing else (unless you count the scraps of your drop pod "nothing else").

The colonists themselves can have useful, harmful, or utterly self-destructive traits and like real people usually mix the good with the bad. You can have a tough space marine who's a great shot but can't build for shit, pawns unwilling to use weapons even when threatened with death, and pawns that refuse to do dumb labour. Some pawns can be worse than useless and can be actively harmful to the colony, so be careful who you pick and who you add to your colony along the way. Dead weight isn't so easy to get rid of, and exiling, executing or just outright murdering your own pawns comes with a cost.

In addition you have a scenario editor that lets you tailor-make a scenario. One particular option is the presence of a Planet Killer, which blows up your planet after enough days have passed, making time of the essence.

After that you choose between 3 AI Storytellers and their level of sadism difficulty, ranging from showering your colony with gifts and significantly reducing the likelihood of colony assaults to kicking you till you're down, kicking you while you're down, and kicking you all the way down. Your choices are;

1. Cassandra Classic: the vanilla storyteller. A gradual ramp-up of threat level based on the difficulty, and your wealth (or just time, depending on settings). Great for beginners, but after a while of play the repeating pattern of raid-recover-raid-recover will soon become predictable and tiresome.
2. Phoebe Chillax: the tsundere storyteller. Peaceful periods for colony-building broken up by threats, she can hit just as hard as Cass given the right difficulty so make sure you've fortified your positions. While this might sound great for campers, it also can lull you into a false sense of security and rob you of the weapons raiders tend to drop regularly when playing with another storyteller - meaning that when that big raid does come you're caught with few defences and simple pistols and rifles because you spent all your time and effort building a nice new rec room.
3. Randy Random: the random storyteller. Sneers at concepts such as "logical progression" and "fair play" and sets off whatever event he fucking wants. One moment, you receive a surprise cargo drop of bearskin trousers, the next moment he sics a herd of manhunting elephants onto your colony. All this at any point in your playthrough, be it potentially at the start of the game or when you're well stocked on textiles and food. Will most likely be your primary storyteller once you've gotten the hang of the game. The real fun in Rimworld comes when multiple events kick off at once making you really struggle to keep your colony together, which is why when the training wheels come off most people prefer Randy. He isn't totally random and still spaces out the worst events and still scales them (a little) to your progress, but he's still a close as *FUN as you can get.

The storyteller decides when events will be triggered, what they are, and how big. A sudden epidemic of flu, a heatwave, a raid; for the most part events can't be avoided and you can reduce the chance of some events to zero, but doing so just increases the chance of other events happening. Basically when storyteller decides it's time to fuck you up, you get fucked up. Depending on setting, either passage of time or colony wealth increases the size and difficulty of raids; in the latter case, the savvy player will make sure the colony is well defended before putting down fancy carpets and making gold sculptures.

Once your planet has loaded up, you basically direct your colonists in gathering supplies, researching, and just generally surviving. Of course, you're not the only humans or indeed non-humans on this planet;

• Pirates: (nearly) permanently hostile assholes. Will generally raid your base for shits and giggles, and come in Outlander and Tribe flavors. The more advanced kind can land by drop pods, sometimes set up sieges and mortar your colony from a distance, or just blow their way in through your walls with grenades and rocket launchers. But mostly they just wander dumbly into your killbox and traps, which is just as well as some of these bastards can have as much armour and firepower as you do (though they lack the most advanced guns).
• Outlander Unions: Remnants of whatever used to be the dominant ruling power, now fragmented and trying to survive much like you. Will generally use contemporary technology like firearm usage or, if you've really cheesed them off, artillery bombardment and drop pod launches. More or less pirates who aren't quite as piratey and a little less well armed. Some are also hostile... uh, like pirates.
• Tribes: Humans who decided to take a step back in technology for whatever reason. Weak equipment (unless you're dealing with spearthrowers or longbowmen, who can easily take off a limb or vital organ with a well-placed shot unless you're armored up) but make up for it via sheer numbers and propensity of working out ways of getting into/tunnelling into your settlement avoiding your carefully prepared traps and killboxes, and once inside being able to easily overwhelm your colonists with lots of stabby. Some tribes are friendly, but you won't be trading widescreen TVs with them.
• Mechanoids: those above-mentioned killing machines, who cannot be bargained with nor reasoned with, and are heavily armoured with serious firepower. Incredibly potent within their chosen combat role, but near-helpless outside of it, and they will fuck up your shit. The DLCs buff them so that every visit is an even greater opportunity for mass colonist limb loss and death.
• Insectoids: A faction known as 'Sorne Geneline', you can't trade with them and they tend to turn up under mountains, bursting out of the ground to overwhelm you as a tidal wave of crawling, biting, scratching death. (Did you ever think that maybe a deep mountain base would be the safest way to defend against raids? Think again!).
• The Empire: A crumbled, degenerate feudal empire, long past their prime but still powerful. Introduced in the Royalty DLC, they start off neutral and won't even trade with you unless you have gained feudal ranks with them. Have psycasts and the most advanced technology, so not generally a good idea to piss them off.

Most of these factions can be friend or foe depending on how you interact with them, and when starting a game you are guaranteed to get a visit from a neutral group. Pirates, savage tribes and rough outlanders start hostile and will generally regress back to hostility in time even if you befriend them. If you make a faction friendly enough, you can ask for trade caravans or even military support during a raid.

When raids do come, it's with the purpose of burning your fields, breaking your equipment, killing or kidnapping your pawns, stealing your stuff, and generally undoing many hours of careful real world management. Insectoids and mechanoids are always hostile, and their sole intent is to kill and destroy.

Gameplay

Just like the ASCII dorfs of Armok, Rimworld has you commanding your colonists (referred to internally as "pawns", which also applies to animals) for day to day activities. Harvesting food, research, production, you name it, and they're even vulnerable to mental breakdowns if they get too stressed out. Colonists also have traits and backstories that determine their specializations and attitude towards others, and coupled with the random generation this can result in some interesting scenarios. Your head chef's ex-boyfriend is the leader of that Outlander Union you are at war with? That refugee you just took in is actually the younger sibling of your middle-aged tailor? Crap like that. They can even tame and befriend animals either as livestock, beasts of burden, guard animals, and pets.

Your colonists aren't too smart, and while (unlike a certain dwarfy breed in another game) they'll usually act in their own interests, if you're not careful they'll do shit like let injured people bleed to death while playing chess, walk straight into a crossfire to pick up dropped corn, and sleep happily while a fire burns down most of your colony. Keeping them happy is the aim, which you can do by keeping them fed and well rested, giving them free time, prettifying their surroundings, nice bedrooms, good meals, even temperatures, and the like. Oh, and not traumatising them by exposing them to rotting corpses or multiple organ theft.

Combat is simple in play but extremely complex under the hood. Your pawns have anatomy; it's perfectly possible for a humble arrow to penetrate one's brain because the suit of high tech armour they were wearing didn't cover the face. Heart, liver and brain instakills can happen regardless of how well armoured, and loss of toes and fingers is distressingly common in minor fights. And what other game can you have your nose shot off, then be dumped by your lover because she now finds you repulsive? (Though having your ears shot off makes you deaf.) Melee combat is particularly powerful, since you can't fire any gun in close combat and a short spear stab does as much damage as a charge rifle shot. Personal shields also exist to help their bearers get into CCQ without being Last Samurai'd.

A glance into any given Rimworld community will discuss frequently about the war crimes they perform on every playthrough, and with good reason. You can capture any person from any faction (either visitors or raiders) and they're completely at your mercy. Working them to death into labor camps is scratching the surface. Using them as guinea pigs for your fledgling surgeons to practice on is a common activity, as is harvesting their organs. Hell, a common tactic for pirate prisoners is to replace a hand or foot with a cheap prosthetic and let them go: in the event they come back, their movement is impaired and they're even more of a burden during an attack. And player can get real creative on how their living quarters are, such as filling their prison cells with a hundred cats and oceans of beer, so they're constantly vomited on by inebriated felines, and the overall mess made of vomit, blood, and generic "dirt" will drive them insane several times over. Keep that door locked.

And now you can justify your evil deeds with religion!

To complete the game, which is actually optional, your pawns must escape the planet. You can do this by constructing a spacecraft, finding an AI willing to get you off-world, sucking up to an Empire for taking you, or transcending to the Machine God (I shit you not). These are not the easiest things to do, and will almost always include great challenges and difficult battles.

This page is still being worked on, mind you.

The DLCs

Currently there are two DLCs for Rimworld, offering a bit more for those with only a few thousand hours of play (which for Rimworld isn't much).

• Royalty: Introduces the Empire, feudal ranks and psycasts (pretty much spells by another name). The Empire have access to technology so advanced that you can't research it until you buy its techprints, with some impossible to research at all. Being feudal, they won't trade with you unless you gain your pawns feudal titles by giving the Empire gold, slaves and prisoners as tribute, or completing quests for them. As they go up the ranks your pawns gain more psycast levels and powers and can call in favours such as silver drops and drone strikes; you can even ask them to take you off the planet by topping the ranks and completing a quest. If this all sounds too good to be true, it is: high ranked colonists will become increasingly self-entitled, high maintenance assholes, demanding fancy clothes and thrones and having mental breaks if denied. Making an enemy of the Empire to swipe their tech instead is viable but not the brightest of ideas; aside from psycasts they also have high end tech such as zeus hammers, monomolecular swords, self-aware "persona" weapons, cataphract armour and lots of cybernetic implants, including one that dissolves all their equipment when they die. They can fuck you up.

One common complaint of Royalty is that it buffs the mechanoids ludicrously, as having the most powerful melee units, limb-lopping railguns and walking tanks clearly wasn't enough. They're now also given mortars, low shields to totally block incoming fire, high shields to block your own mortars, and fortified cluster bases with three types of turrets. The only saving grace (apart from Imperial support, if you choose to take it) is that such clusters often have unstable power cells that can cause chain explosions and wipe out whole groups of them.

• Ideoligion: Introduces religion and ideology to the world of Rimworld. Ever wonder why tribals hurl themselves at your miniguns every few weeks with hundreds of casualties but never seem to get the message? Religion is why! Ideoligions (a mix between religion and ideals) dictate how a faction should act, including your own, whether that be cannibalism, nudism, raiding, slavery, living totally in the dark like molemen, enjoying drugs and casual sex, practicing ritual scarification and so on. Includes religious relics and events of many kinds, from Christmas trees to human sacrifice, ritual blinding to gladiator fights. It is possible to act outside your ideoligion, but with penalties, so if your dominant ideoligion says you shouldn't cut down trees, butcher animals or wear clothes, you're going to have a tough time. Also, you may find it difficult to keep multi-faith colonies happy, especially if its ideoligions are polar opposites. Just like real life.

Many reviews have complained that ideoligions nail you into a role and it's difficult to change. This is true and adds to the game's challenge, but the ideoligion itself is definable from the start and can be reformed as you go along. If you want a vanilla experience you still can have that, or you can go full nihilist and have an idealigion where literally any evil shit you can think of is ok or encouraged. A bigger issue with the DLC is that it buffs the fucking mechanoids yet again, giving them a termite unit with thump cannon that knocks down the thickest of walls like they weren't there. It also gives tribals and pirates breach axes, as if their previous ways of breaking through walls weren't enough. Git gud.

Remember, Tynan wants you to generate a story, and your precious, perfect colony being massacred is a great story...