Rimworld?

[caffeinated21]

Curious if anyone here plays Rimworld? Just bought a copy and my impression is that there’s a lot of complexity but not necessarily a lot of depth. Curious what the ONI-verse thinks...

[Ixenzo]

ONI is a child of Rimworld and Factorio. It takes something from both of them and makes it its own unique thing. And yet you cannot compare ONI and those games directly, they're jsut different.

[Oozinator]

3 hours ago, caffeinated21 said:

 Just bought a copy and my impression is that there’s a lot of complexity but not necessarily a lot of depth.

Play more ^^

[meepmoop]

I tried to play it several times in the last couple of years but never got to the point it 'hooks' me.

I may love the game in a certain circumstances (as there are a lot of games I did not like the first time I tried but I grew into them) but as for the few hours I put into it nothing 'clicked' for me.

 

I did get the impression it is quite a different style then oni, as people say its a 'story-generator' while oni is 'puzzle-solver'. depending on the mood a person might like one over the other.

[Gurgel]

While I love both Oni and Factorio and have spent countless enjoyable hours with both, Rimworld lets me strangely cold and uninterested. No idea what the reason is.

[caffeinated21]

Thanks y’all- if it helps I enjoy ONI a lot more than factorio. Factorio sucked me in, but by the time I got to logistic bots I lost interest

[DarkMaster13]

Rimworld is a far less predictable game, where the challenge is about responding and adapting to the unexpected.  It's sometimes described as a child of Dwarf Fortress and Left 4 Dead, thanks to it using a dynamic story teller system to throw a mix of good and bad events at you to create a gradual difficulty curve.  You will regularly be given random loot drops as well as have to defend your base against large attack groups.

Among the colony management games (ONI, Rimworld, DF), I would say that it's the one with the best combat system and best character system.  You're able to directly control your characters in a real time tactics sim when needed and there's a very in-depth combat simulation.  Picking your arena, taking cover, flanking, choosing when to retreat with who are all interesting tactical choices when you get into a firefight.  Though sadly most of this falls apart in melee combat.

Your characters are also much more interesting with all of them having relationship scores with all the other colony members.  They form relationships, rivalries, get married, get divorced, hang out, and have generally more interesting traits.  They also have backgrounds and ages which dictate their skills and health.  There's far less abstraction in general.

On the flip side, production lines are pretty basic compared to either ONI or DF and the abundance of trading options means that you rarely need to do anything specific.  You're both free to make whatever you want to for money and most resource problems are just a caravan away from being solved.  So there aren't really puzzles in the game beyond combat situations, which have significant random components to them.

The one clear aspect that Rimworld has going for it that ONI does not is a spectacular modding scene.

[KILLABUDZ]

I have about 1000h in Rimworld and a little less in ONI.
Rimworld is a totally different game, focusing on violence much more than ONI. Its temp system is less advanced in TX ways but has more of an effect in general environment, as do other weather effects like rain and snow. Crafting is handled quite differently, and you can trade, both with space teleporter tech or the old fashioned way by forming a caravan and traveling across the land, risking encounters like in Pokemon.
The game generates random events which force reactions, ONI is an extremely passive and "boring" game in comparison.
As DarkMaster13 said, your pawns in Rimworld have very detailed interactions with the world and each other, seeing people fall in love, fall out of love, start hating each other, punch each other in the face, etc, brings different kind of life to your Rimworld colony, and many people develop rich and stories detailing the rise and fall of their little empire.
And the mods. Rimworld mods are insane. There is so much variety, from drug manufacturing, organ harvesting, advanced weapons including armored vehicles, more enemies, reskins for elves and dwarves, or WH40k Space Marines and Imperial Guard, and many, many more.
Plus Rimworld runs perfectly on an absolute potato computer.

[storm6436]

I recently bought a copy of Rimworld... I'd have to check, but I figure I have 80-100 hours on it now.  It's been correctly stated that the game has elements of Factorio and ONI, yet is its own beast. 

 Sadly, the base game is, much as you said, not very deep in many regards, while being much deeper in the than either "source" game in others.  Honestly, it makes me a little sad to see a lot of promise withering on the vine.  Mods in ONI are largely optional, more QOL related bits, but mods for Rimworld are almost non-negotiable...

 

Rimworld's base game literally embodies the 80/20 principle for every feature, where 80% of completion, the easy stuff, was good enough and they've ignored the remaining 20%, the hard stuff.  As a result, almost every feature feels hollow or stunted.  This is true of everything from the UI (missing multiple tools that make playing so much easier and layouts that would be placeholders in a more polished game), content (limited materials, building types, weapons, etc) and mechanics (too many to list.) 

 With ONI, I'd say "Play the game to figure out what annoys you, then poke through the workahop to find what addresses that (long piping!) but for Rimworld, play the base game long enough to figure out the baseline mechanics, then google "best rimworld mods" and find a list of indispensibles... and start grabbing."  ONI is a few feet wide and 6-12 inches deep, base rimworld is a half mile across, but less than an inch the whole way. 

 It you want, when I get back home and finish setting up my new system (went from an FX-9590/R9 Nano to a 3950x/5700 XT), I'll pull my list of mods and post recommendations. 

[Lurve]

Let's have a look at my steam stats:

Rimworld: 602 hours

Oxygen Not Included: 1347 hours

Factorio: 2857 hours

Those numbers are padded because all three games can be left paused in the background without melting my computer so I tend to just not turn them off, but that's about the right ratio.  Rimworld's a good game that's worth playing, but once you learn it you find each game plays similarly.  Many of the things that need doing have only one real way to do them.  For example, beyond the midgame you'll need to make a killbox to fend off increasing waves of raiders.  Where and of what and how big your killbox is is up to you, but you're going to need one. 

2 hours ago, storm6436 said:

 I'll pull my list of mods and post recommendations. 

Medieval Times + Cults + boreal start location = the coziest dark monastery you'll ever get to play.  Grow hops and weed, worship Shub-Niggurath for tentacled horrors and all the demon goats you can eat.

[ETA] There's some neat new stuff since the last time I looked into the game.  Gonna have to try out the spaceship mod.  It outwardly looks like the Space Exploration mod for Factorio, which is a fun ride.

[caffeinated21]

Thanks for the feedback y’all!

[SackMaggie]

Well... I do like them, they have their own unique, but Factorio and Rimworld just lack visual (It fit their game but not suit me) and sound, When I play either of these game I've to play some random youtube music in the background.

In Rimworld you secure food source, make killbox then you are done the game doesn't put clear objective to you. So you have to set your own goal. (you have a lot of things to do, but you don't have to do it)

EDIT: There is a clear goal, reach the escape ship in time or build your own.

In Factorio your goal is send 1 rocket, but once you have logistic robot ready then you have easy mode enabled. You have one design for each stuff then copy paste to the entire world just to send more rocket and more ridiculous numbers.

In ONI you have all bit of their features but not entire features and I tend to enjoy ONI more than those game.

But if you do have a friends to play factorio with you then do it, Rimwold and ONI can't win against that feature.

ONI have (almost) all the feature they have and represent in their own characteristic and that make ONI unique.

[KILLABUDZ]

5 hours ago, storm6436 said:

Rimworld's base game literally embodies the 80/20 principle for every feature, where 80% of completion, the easy stuff, was good enough and they've ignored the remaining 20%, the hard stuff.

You have to remember that Rimworld is a one man labor of love. Tynan Sylvester has been very open about using the 80/20 rule very strictly as otherwise the game would literally never get to a state that could be called finished. Often these problems are just best left to modders, as its the best case of free market, if people enjoy the base game enough to create a plethora of mods then the game will be polished by its users to its optimal state.
 

 

10 minutes ago, SackMaggie said:

the game doesn't put clear objective to you

There is a clear goal, reach the escape ship in time or build your own.

Rimworld offers a lot of combat play, and if you ignore that then the game gets stale faster, I try to have a core of skilled crew and then collect as many cannon fodder as I can. These can be housed easily in large dorms and fed cheap food as long as you provide decent entertainment and healthcare. And plan your animals, try not to overstock on the wrong ones, get trainable attack animals to pair with your troops, pack animals for wool and milk and caravans, dogs etc for workers to help carry stuff home. And plant crops early and in plenty.

[DarkMaster13]

Side note, there is a Rimworld multiplayer mod now.  The dev has officially featured it.

[SackMaggie]

11 hours ago, KILLABUDZ said:

There is a clear goal, reach the escape ship in time or build your own.

Oh yeah I totally forgot about it.

[Yoma_Nosme]

Rimworld is a cool game...

I did a run where I made a custom game...my gf and I, our two cats, land on a nice spot near the equator...

Long story short...first cat was slayed and eaten by vargus on the first day...cat no.2 was crippled by another animal and i shot it...my gf got liver failure bit before she died she was abducted by enemies...

Later she broke free to my surprise and returned to the base (them pirates have good healthcare i tell ya', she got a bionic liver)followed by many space pirates...ofc I killed them with a whip of my wrist. The problem was I had a new gf and new cats...she didn't took it lightly...in game and irl...so...yeah...fun game

[storm6436]

On 1/12/2020 at 11:40 PM, KILLABUDZ said:

You have to remember that Rimworld is a one man labor of love. Tynan Sylvester has been very open about using the 80/20 rule very strictly as otherwise the game would literally never get to a state that could be called finished. Often these problems are just best left to modders, as its the best case of free market, if people enjoy the base game enough to create a plethora of mods then the game will be polished by its users to its optimal state.
 

 

There is a clear goal, reach the escape ship in time or build your own.

Rimworld offers a lot of combat play, and if you ignore that then the game gets stale faster, I try to have a core of skilled crew and then collect as many cannon fodder as I can. These can be housed easily in large dorms and fed cheap food as long as you provide decent entertainment and healthcare. And plan your animals, try not to overstock on the wrong ones, get trainable attack animals to pair with your troops, pack animals for wool and milk and caravans, dogs etc for workers to help carry stuff home. And plant crops early and in plenty.

 I get it and was well aware.  By industry standards, the "final" version of the game is essentially straddling alpha/beta level in terms of content and feature completion.  And it's not that I dislike the dev or believe I'm magically entitled to anything, you get what you get and I knew that going in... 

 But in comparison, I use maybe 6 mods for ONI, small stuff mostly like the geyser calculator because I'm lazy and don't feel like calculating every geyser by hand.  Long bridges (jump 2 squares instead of 1) is pretty much not optional for some of the stuff I build. 

 Rimworld though?  I'm fairly certain I'm running 40+ mods, to include a mod for handling mods.  Even the mod system needs a little more TLC.  Something like KSP's modloader patch system, where modders can specify "Always load after/before X" would be invaluable for mod compatibility.  Doesn't exist. RIMUI is so stupid handy for quick data display. Same with the tab reworks or additions for animals, work, and research.  1-4 priority system is simply too limited if you're not breaking it down by job subtype (which makes sense why you wouldn't, given how many there are)...  Stuff like Colony manager makes sense why it isn't part of the core game, the periodic performance hit is ugly, though stuff like that should be puntable to separate threads (and I get the impression there's not a lot of multi-theading going on.)   Then there's the graphics overall mods I use, one of which exposes the settings that are there in the base game but not displayed. 

  And then you have the mods that extend or replace entire systems, like Hospitality.  The base faction system is stupid primitive and very limited.  It makes sense why anything dealing with kids wasn't core, but some mods like Fertile fields (farming), wall lights, skylights, etc. fill in a ton of gaps that are extremely frustrating. 

"You have two options" is pretty much the rule for almost everything, hence the 8-9 "Vanilla Extended X" mods I run.  There are a number of gaps in terms of itemization for buildings that are nigh maddening, especially on the production side where without some sort of increased efficiency the number of colonists you need for a viable colony skyrockets (In ONI terms, imagine if the metal refinery was never implmented and all you ever had were two rock crushers, one that worked half as well, and the current one)...  Beyond that, I'd love for there to be an in-game encyclopedia to look up stats for gear/buildings like there is in ONI, but... not implemented.  Wouldn't be hard to implement either.  Similarly, it'd be nice to have a better display to compare stats on armor gear on the ground vs what your guy has equipped, or a better visual display of what slots it uses so you know if you can equip it at all with your current gear. 

 In the end, the base game's been out, what, a year?  Only bugfixes. Shuffling all this onto modders is acceptable to an extent... but given modders are not dependable sources, well, when 3/4 of your content is via mods, most of which are remediating major shortfalls, that's not good. 

 

Otherwise, I agree with the back half of your post.  I usually aim for cougars/panthers as combat capable pets, given their all-round utility (decent HP/DPS, fast movement for chasing down runners and their ability to haul when not in combat.) 

Generally prefer elephants for cargo animals, but muffalo are my next choice after them.  As for food animals, only ones that seem worth the effort are chickens, but I could be wrong on any of the above. 

[KILLABUDZ]

3 hours ago, storm6436 said:

I usually aim for cougars/panthers as combat capable pets, given their all-round utility (decent HP/DPS, fast movement for chasing down runners and their ability to haul when not in combat.) 

Generally prefer elephants for cargo animals, but muffalo are my next choice after them.  As for food animals, only ones that seem worth the effort are chickens, but I could be wrong on any of the above. 

All predator types are good for attack animals, Thrumbos are so hard to tame but if you manage to get a pair and start breeding them they absolutely destroy sappers, grenadiers, rocket launchers etc without taking losses usually.

Chickens are meh, I had them growing up irl and dont like them. They are the most micro intensive animal in the game. I prefer pigs and muffalos, alpacas, and dromedaries. Boomalopes are great if you make a proper enclosure for them, basically the slicksters of Rimworld. Cows are amazing but you cant count on getting a trade.

For attack animals they should be different for diff troops. Snakes are actually great for your melee troops coz they are almost impossible to hit at range so they tank up really well. Wargs are great fighters but need actual meat, they wont eat kibble so I usually avoid unless im playing a cannibal colony. Bears are OP, as are elephants and rhinos. Large cats are good, dog and fox variants are decent. Dog trainability make them generally better used for haulers imo.

And Rimworld as a base game is fine. It is certainly a bit crusty and clunky, but it was all done by one guy. Most games have a dozen + people working on it. I absolutely love the game, both in its base form and with mods. I think its incredibly unique, and it reminds me a lot of playing table top wargames like WH40K with its combat system. Its building and crafting system is very basic but extremely functional, the game runs fine and doesnt crash and just works.

You dont compare a beautiful house built by one man to the Taj Mahal.

[Ixenzo]

9 hours ago, KILLABUDZ said:

Thrumbos are so hard to tame but if you manage to get a pair and start breeding them they absolutely destroy sappers, grenadiers, rocket launchers etc without taking losses usually

Until they eat everything consumable on the map, including trees. It's pretty much impossible to keep a vanilla thrumbo fed unless you're far into the game where a thrumbo or two is not a valuable asset anymore.

[KILLABUDZ]

2 hours ago, Ixenzo said:

It's pretty much impossible to keep a vanilla thrumbo fed unless you're far into the game where a thrumbo or two is not a valuable asset anymore.

Until you realize Thrumbos can tank doomsday rockets without dying and still get into melee range and rip those nasty late game raiders apart, sometimes facetanking rockets which do more damage to the enemies its tearing to pieces with its huge horn, and if they die, you get a valuable horn to sell, not to mention thrumbo fur is incredibly expensive. Geothermal hydroponics makes food crops much less space intensive, I tend to have large tracts of land growing lumber just for crafting and selling, just swap this over to more haygrass.

[Ixenzo]

1 hour ago, KILLABUDZ said:

Until you realize Thrumbos can tank doomsday rockets without dying and still get into melee range and rip those nasty late game raiders apart, sometimes facetanking rockets which do more damage to the enemies its tearing to pieces with its huge horn, and if they die, you get a valuable horn to sell, not to mention thrumbo fur is incredibly expensive. Geothermal hydroponics makes food crops much less space intensive, I tend to have large tracts of land growing lumber just for crafting and selling, just swap this over to more haygrass.

Aka, far into the endgame where you don't need thrumbos. With proper defense rocketman-raiders die long before they can try to inflict any damage. Though I must allow a possibility of bad happenings, since I usually played a solo naked tribal no research start and only allowed the original character in the colony. The raids are a bit different compared a regular game.

[KILLABUDZ]

1 minute ago, Ixenzo said:

since I usually played a solo naked tribal no research start and only allowed the original character in the colony. The raids are a bit different compared a regular game.

Solo colonies are completely different from everything else, far more than standard base, villages, or mega base are from each other. Unless you play frozen cave or peninsula you have to protect all sides, or typically 2-3 for mountains.
I normally play large map mega bases and the game gets smart and send sappers that calculate the weakest places in your defenses and attack with explosives. I dont use exploity killboxes like the rotten corpse maze or the crematorium, I rely on building designs from old keeps of layering defenses and fighting retreat.
When you have a 300+ map basically covered and have 30-60 pawns the game is entirely different, like in ONI you have pawns dedicated to tasks, cooks, farmers, crafters, fighters, and dogsbodies, and an extra farmer or 2 to feed an extremely powerful troop like thrumbos, elephants, and rhinos pays off.
But then it comes down to what you want to do in these sandbox games.

[Ixenzo]

2 hours ago, KILLABUDZ said:

 

I have played my own share of sprawling colonies before getting bored with them. No challenge whatsoever, the raids may be three hundred tribals or fifteen rocketmen with support, they all get obliterated without so much as a scratch to the colony. A thrumbo or dozen won't last in the middle of that firefight any appreciable amount of time.

Pretty much the only animals worth ranching are the ones for wool/fur in the early-mid game, the rest aren't needed and are at most pet projects with no tangible return.

[KILLABUDZ]

6 hours ago, Ixenzo said:

No challenge whatsoever, the raids may be three hundred tribals or fifteen rocketmen with support, they all get obliterated without so much as a scratch to the colony.

If you choose to exploit mechanics that make raids easy and that makes the game boring for you then that isnt the games fault.
I believe this game is at its core as much or more a combat game than anything else. Building well planned defensive lines and controlling your pawns. If you go and set up long switch backs with auto turrets at each end, the rotten corpse maze, crematorium, etc, then ofc half the stuff in the game is useless. Why bother building an armory and training specific attack animals etc when you can just exploit the game. Why bother actually building anything at all? If you plan to just exploit the game to remove 95% of the challenge you might as well just turn on god mode and paint the base you want without having to bother with any challenge at all.

[melquiades]

On 12/1/2020 at 8:31 AM, Oozinator said:

Play more ^^

I have played more at that game that I am willing to admit, and I still find the base game shallow as a poodle, wide as an ocean.

In the sense that there are many many mechanics, but most of them are simplified to the bare working minimum (it had to be done that way otherwise Tynan would have never finished the game).

But is fixed by mods, lots of mods.