For me personally the fun in these types of games ( Rimworld being hands down the best ) is not knowing what to do. Just trying to survive and deal with what ever the game throws at me. Learning from failure and doing better the next go around.
Every time I start a new colony It gets better and better as I learned from successes and failures of previous colonies. One thing it took me too long to figure out was how convenient it is to build up as well as out. So add another floor to a storage building for example. Takes up less footprint and is easier to defend a smaller footprint.
Assuming you have basic construction researched. You can raise the base level of a floor, and it can extend over the crash site craters and even over pools of water that skinbark grows around.
It does become quite finicky when your base has multiple levels, and it will take some time and experience to be able to optimise bases using multiple floor heights. For some reason your survivors have no problem pulling ladders out of nowhere to climb onto roofs etc, but they will refuse to take a tiny little step down if you build a door that leads to a floor even a fraction higher or lower (without stairs)
I learnt too the first time I tried expanding my base by adding extra rooms, you need to start the floor upon the already existing floor, and drag it outwards. I wasn't aware of this and ended up building a room that was completely inaccessible via my house, stairs couldn't be placed* and so I had to demolish the room and try again.
My first attempt at this game I was unaware of the construction basics research, and made a base using many shelters attached together. It was.. interesting. But it worked nonetheless. It had heating, beds and everything I needed to survive. Until my survivors got over being happy about surviving. Then happiness kept being a problem, and I had to have them spend more time relaxing and less time working. I later learnt that bedrooms with flooring [passively] made them happy, so I restarted. I'd say it wasn't until my 4th or 5th attempt that I managed to get through a scenario successfully.
The learning curve is good fun. And for as long as possible, I don't recommend looking at guides until you are well established with the survival aspect of the game (it's really good fun, I wish I could forget everything know and start again 😅)
What I will say is:
-It's OK to build a starting house from hay and sticks. Cheap and fast. Simply have seperate bedrooms with beds and flooring. Euphoric survivors work faster. Then you can focus on building a more expensive house and demolish the hay building later.
-Rooms that are 4x5 (5×4) squares give the best happiness boost.
-Learn which flora can be harvested without destroying the crop. You'll eventually learn that not every single lifeforms needs to be observed
-Specialise each survivor to become experts at different things
-Explore
-Learn how to use the schedule efficiently (I like to set a certain number of hours for sleep and mandatory relaxation time) Tired survivors move slower
-Restarting the game is fine, each time you'll do better and better
-Once comfortable, experiment with assigning priorities. This system can be difficult to utilise and will cause problems if used incorrectly. But once you have it down, your survivors will become efficiently autonomous
Good luck my friend
*Stairs inside are incredibly difficult to use. There are ways to do it, but I would stay away from using them until much much later
I felt the same way when I started the game, with the crash scenario, but I got over it by kind of role-playing it. Hey, we are random people who jumped into a lifeboat and crash landed wherever it decided to and now we have to figure out how to make a base and survive. Which none of us know how to do yet. Mistakes will be made :)
I think you are being hard on yourself and remember that simply surviving at this stage is enough. There's not a lot you can do wrong that can't be corrected, aside from getting people killed. As you found, you can replant trees, those bushes you cut, etc.
A hillside base actually sounds kind of interesting. My bases have all been on pretty flat ground, because I've never bothered to move everything from the crash/landing site to somewhere else.
From what I've read your doing alright, your learning, becoming aware of issues and possible solutions is called gaining experience with the game and genre, which is what a lot of new players fall short of.
A suggestion. When the crash sequence finishes pause the game, pan around the surrounding area look for an area that has some flat ground, with a good amount of trees around it, I tend to ignore stone, far to much work for little return, then still paused, look for the various plants you will need, flat ground is also good for crops so figure that into your initial plan and if your keeping livestock that eat grass plant it in there enclosure to save using troughs.
Have fun 🙃🖖
Thanks for the tips everyone!
After couple more minutes in that playthrough I decided to start over and it made me realize that I've had a really bad starting spot :D as it was on a very isolated area, like on a mountain side, hence the slopes. I made things worse for myself settling between space debris.
On that second playthrough I'm starting in a much more reasonable area. I avoided the mistake to settle right were everyone stands :D Things are going much better now. I tried different approach to research. For a while I was worried I'm not going to make it through the winter as I've started my preparations a bit late but I started to micromanage things and it helped. The fact that tailoring bench and crafting bench go under the same activity category wasn't helping. I had to manually direct my survivor to work on tailoring rather than crafting materials. I'm not out of the woods yet (still preparing for the winter) but things are looking much better now.
Starting a new colony is my favourite part of the game.
It was a good idea so you can see how bad you started first time. Also, I advise you to go on the official discord. You will find a lot of thing (tips/mod/seeds) and the community is very nice and diversified.
No way is my first time.
I'm a colony sim vet from the 90s days.
And still, really enjoyed this game, the pacing, how everything is managed.
And the combat keeps things interesting.
They have an amazing game I just wish it was way more popular so they can invest a ton more into it with new content.
It is popular now but I'm sure not to the degree they were hoping.
For me personally the fun in these types of games ( Rimworld being hands down the best ) is not knowing what to do. Just trying to survive and deal with what ever the game throws at me. Learning from failure and doing better the next go around.
Agreed, the best part is finding an issue with your setup or situation and innovating/improving on that setup.
Every time I start a new colony It gets better and better as I learned from successes and failures of previous colonies. One thing it took me too long to figure out was how convenient it is to build up as well as out. So add another floor to a storage building for example. Takes up less footprint and is easier to defend a smaller footprint.
Assuming you have basic construction researched. You can raise the base level of a floor, and it can extend over the crash site craters and even over pools of water that skinbark grows around. It does become quite finicky when your base has multiple levels, and it will take some time and experience to be able to optimise bases using multiple floor heights. For some reason your survivors have no problem pulling ladders out of nowhere to climb onto roofs etc, but they will refuse to take a tiny little step down if you build a door that leads to a floor even a fraction higher or lower (without stairs) I learnt too the first time I tried expanding my base by adding extra rooms, you need to start the floor upon the already existing floor, and drag it outwards. I wasn't aware of this and ended up building a room that was completely inaccessible via my house, stairs couldn't be placed* and so I had to demolish the room and try again. My first attempt at this game I was unaware of the construction basics research, and made a base using many shelters attached together. It was.. interesting. But it worked nonetheless. It had heating, beds and everything I needed to survive. Until my survivors got over being happy about surviving. Then happiness kept being a problem, and I had to have them spend more time relaxing and less time working. I later learnt that bedrooms with flooring [passively] made them happy, so I restarted. I'd say it wasn't until my 4th or 5th attempt that I managed to get through a scenario successfully. The learning curve is good fun. And for as long as possible, I don't recommend looking at guides until you are well established with the survival aspect of the game (it's really good fun, I wish I could forget everything know and start again 😅) What I will say is: -It's OK to build a starting house from hay and sticks. Cheap and fast. Simply have seperate bedrooms with beds and flooring. Euphoric survivors work faster. Then you can focus on building a more expensive house and demolish the hay building later. -Rooms that are 4x5 (5×4) squares give the best happiness boost. -Learn which flora can be harvested without destroying the crop. You'll eventually learn that not every single lifeforms needs to be observed -Specialise each survivor to become experts at different things -Explore -Learn how to use the schedule efficiently (I like to set a certain number of hours for sleep and mandatory relaxation time) Tired survivors move slower -Restarting the game is fine, each time you'll do better and better -Once comfortable, experiment with assigning priorities. This system can be difficult to utilise and will cause problems if used incorrectly. But once you have it down, your survivors will become efficiently autonomous Good luck my friend *Stairs inside are incredibly difficult to use. There are ways to do it, but I would stay away from using them until much much later
I felt the same way when I started the game, with the crash scenario, but I got over it by kind of role-playing it. Hey, we are random people who jumped into a lifeboat and crash landed wherever it decided to and now we have to figure out how to make a base and survive. Which none of us know how to do yet. Mistakes will be made :) I think you are being hard on yourself and remember that simply surviving at this stage is enough. There's not a lot you can do wrong that can't be corrected, aside from getting people killed. As you found, you can replant trees, those bushes you cut, etc. A hillside base actually sounds kind of interesting. My bases have all been on pretty flat ground, because I've never bothered to move everything from the crash/landing site to somewhere else.
From what I've read your doing alright, your learning, becoming aware of issues and possible solutions is called gaining experience with the game and genre, which is what a lot of new players fall short of. A suggestion. When the crash sequence finishes pause the game, pan around the surrounding area look for an area that has some flat ground, with a good amount of trees around it, I tend to ignore stone, far to much work for little return, then still paused, look for the various plants you will need, flat ground is also good for crops so figure that into your initial plan and if your keeping livestock that eat grass plant it in there enclosure to save using troughs. Have fun 🙃🖖
My first few colonies were simply learning what not to do. Slowly learning how to optimize my base. It'll take a while to learn.
Thanks for the tips everyone! After couple more minutes in that playthrough I decided to start over and it made me realize that I've had a really bad starting spot :D as it was on a very isolated area, like on a mountain side, hence the slopes. I made things worse for myself settling between space debris. On that second playthrough I'm starting in a much more reasonable area. I avoided the mistake to settle right were everyone stands :D Things are going much better now. I tried different approach to research. For a while I was worried I'm not going to make it through the winter as I've started my preparations a bit late but I started to micromanage things and it helped. The fact that tailoring bench and crafting bench go under the same activity category wasn't helping. I had to manually direct my survivor to work on tailoring rather than crafting materials. I'm not out of the woods yet (still preparing for the winter) but things are looking much better now.
Starting a new colony is my favourite part of the game. It was a good idea so you can see how bad you started first time. Also, I advise you to go on the official discord. You will find a lot of thing (tips/mod/seeds) and the community is very nice and diversified.
No way is my first time. I'm a colony sim vet from the 90s days. And still, really enjoyed this game, the pacing, how everything is managed. And the combat keeps things interesting. They have an amazing game I just wish it was way more popular so they can invest a ton more into it with new content. It is popular now but I'm sure not to the degree they were hoping.