Out of the Frying Pan...

My current RimWorld colony.  Fingers crossed that they make it.

Well, I finally got tired of playing through Borderlands.  I made it to the end of the second game and then realized that I had absolutely no desire to continue playing through the multitude of DLC and then trying to slog through The Pre-Sequel (which I consider to be the weakest game in the series).  Instead, I decided that I would attempt to accomplish my RimWorld  goal of finishing one game on permadeath mode.  As a point of reference, I've attempted permadeath many, many times and have always failed abysmally.  This last round was no exception.

It's always kind of weird that the demise of my permadeath colonies usually comes at a time when I'm feeling pretty good about how things are progressing.  My colonists were settling into their new home, I had managed to replace the flammable wooden walls with stone and fortify my base, my freezer/pantry was well stocked in preparation for winter, and two of my colonists had even recently gotten married (I love it when this happens--the mood boost from marriage is great).  I had been playing this colony for about 6-8 hours--possibly the longest that I've managed in permadeath.

Through my numerous failures on permadeath mode, I've learned that being extremely cautious is the best strategy.  Don't take any unnecessary risks if you don't have to!  Every time any sort of dangerous situation popped up--packs of maneating animals, for example--I promptly garrisoned my colonists inside of the base with the doors locked.  Sure, your colonists have to spend a few boring days locked up, but it's better than getting bitten to death by a pack of maneating bears.

Sadly, the demise of my colony came at the hands...err, mouths...of a pack of maneaters.  One of my colonists just happened to be hunting a hare in the corner of the map...the exact corner where the maneaters entered the picture.  The notification popped up and I quickly took account of the positions of my people.  Three of them were safely tucked into bed...but where the heck was number four?  I started scrolling the map to find him and realized that he had ran almost all the way back to my base.  The pack of maneating huskies had taken him down relatively close to the front door of my base.  I decided that since it was just three huskies that I could probably take them down with my remaining colonists and rescue the poor idiot who had been taken down.

I activated my colonists and positioned them behind some sandbags so they could take aim at the marauding canines.  Just for future reference, three colonists are no match for three maddened huskies.  I could only cringe as my colonists managed to take out two of the huskies and then watched as the last husky and last colonist went down at almost the same time.  I decided to wait until the bitter end and was shocked when one of my colonists managed to get up!  Maybe they could survive this calamity....  I quickly had the original wounded colonist lug all the other colonists into the base.  This was a mistake and I should have instructed him to focus on the colonist with the highest level of medical knowledge and treated them first.  Instead, the rest of them bled to death while he carried them all into the base.  Then, he bled to death himself.  It was tragic and stupid.  I kicked myself for not leaving the original colonist outside to his own fate--maybe he would have recovered and managed to evade the huskies?  Most likely he would have died, but the rest of my colony would have been fine.  My desire to save everyone is what doomed this colony.

I've decided to give permadeath a rest for now and to instead focus on playing at a higher difficulty level.  I'm not sure I have ever finished a game at "rough" difficulty.  I'm currently giving it a go and am having some success.

One thing I love about RimWorld is its ability to create scenarios that are so different from each other.  Your ultimate goal is the same--to escape the planet--but how you get there is completely different every time.  This keeps the game fresh and makes it a ton of fun.  As RimWorld creeps closer to its full release, I am finding that I can still be completely immersed in this weird, management/survival sim.

UPDATE:  2/11/18
I spent a lot of time this weekend nursing my "rough" colony along and have reached the point where I'm preparing to build my ship and try to escape.  This is the point in the game where I always have a difficult time and the "rough" setting seems to make it even worse.  Normally, there's a ton of research to be done to even get to the point where you are ready to start laying down the framework for your ship.  I usually try to have the rest of my colonists working to stockpile materials so the ship can be built quickly after the research is done.  I did this, but I've discovered that building the ship is much more complicated than on the lower settings.  Each ship part requires rare materials and a ton of components (or, even worse, advanced components).  I've managed to find some gold, enough for my building needs, but uranium has been a real pain in the buttocks.  I've scraped together a measly 27...enough to build maybe 1 cryptosleep casket.

I don't know if I'm going to have the patience to see this thing through to the end.  This part of the game is the one part that I hate--I always enjoy the early part.