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I'll be following up updates with a game play update, to explain things more clearly in game play terms.



Let's go from top to bottom here starting at ethics, first off I have a mod that adds some extra ethics and gives you 5 (instead of the default 3) points to pick your ethics. The ones I got are:

Authoritarian provides an extra 0.75 influence a month, an extra enforcer job at your capital building as well as 1 enforcer job every 33 pops, increases the ruler level cap by +1 and can enslave other species. I'm mostly getting this for 2 reasons: It also allows the stratified economy living standard which is gonna make sure we can actually survive the start without running out of consumer goods and it allows us to make a hegemony federation.

Militarist lets us have an extra rival, increases sip fire rate by 10% and reduces claim costs on other empire's sectors by 15%. Its also needed for the Defenders of Nature civic.

Materialist reduces robot upkeep by 10% and increases research speed for physics and engineering by 7%. We also need it for Ecological Engineers

Ecocentrist has artisans and metallurgists use 1 less mineral to make their products, lets us research biotechnology which lets us build a biotechnologist that makes alloys and goods with food instead of minerals, gives a bonus to unity, amenities and society research from natural planetary blockers (so things like destroyed cities or ruined arcology spires wont provide anything), gives us the ability to create blockers when we research the tech that allows us to clear them, a +7% to habitability, 25% refund whenever we demolish a building or district, reduces consumer goods upkeep by 10% and building/district upkeep by 10%

Competitive gives +15% trade value and leader exp gain and a 3% reduction on the market fee. Its also needed for Natural Capitalism

For our civics, Natural Capitalism will have blockers provide food, energy or minerals as well as housing. We also get clerk jobs and entrepeneur jobs from the really heavy blockers (mountains and big things like that). Our biotechnologists will also create trade value and we can build eco-tourism centers that provide an entrepreneur job as well as buffing trade value and amenities for each unique blocker

Ecological Engineers will provide yet more housing off blockers as well as give research jobs. Heavy blockers will provide an extra building slot. We'll start with atmospheric filtering (+5 habitability) and terrestrial sculpting (terraforming), as well as getting access to a research option to let us terraform toxic worlds. We also get access to a decision that'll remove certain harsh planet modifiers and we can build a climate control facility which gives +15% habitability and physics research. On top of all this there is a -15% terraform cost, -25% blocker clear cost and a +25% research for biology and new world techs.


Defenders of Nature provides ranger jobs for blockers, rangers give defense armies, reduce crime, provide society research and gives unity. Also heavy blockers can provide metallurgists or duelists. Metallurgists will spend 1 less mineral in exchange for 1 food and biotechnologists will use an extra food to make an extra 0.5 alloys. Also their ships are organic, they get 5% less health for armor and hull but can innately regenerate. Also ships will have less upkeep.

Yeah, its kinda powerful.



For traits we got Deathworlders, which comes with our origin. It gives +10% habitability as well as +20% bonus to minerals and food from jobs
This species originated on a death world where natural selection ensures only the strongest survive

Evolving gives a +7% to habitability but gives 5% less resources from jobs, 12.50% less unity from jobs and increases consumer goods upkeep by 15%. Note that these are penalties to "jobs", so the bonuses we get from blockers will be unaffected.
This species rapidly evolves. Do not worry, failures die fast

Basic Cybernetics gives +5% army damage and habitability and adds 5 years to leaders lifespan
Members of this species utilize very simple cybernetics

Natural selection gives a +12% to pop growth speed and +7% to habitability but removes 15 years from leader's lifespans
This species has a very flexible genetic structure and a short gestation time. Their strategy is to survive through frequent adaptation

Artificial Spirits gives -20% growth penalty for +10% engineering and physics research
This species reproduces naturally at a very slow rate and has developed a method to increase population size. They imbue a soulless body with artificial spirits; this is not related to psionics but instead is a sort of computing

Psionic Network gives +25% unit from jobs, a +7.50% bonus to society research and +10% to your governing civics attraction.
This species has established a psionic network with their latent psionic abilities. They are bound to the network, the union of their every thought and emotion.

The big takeaway here is that gets a +42% to habitability after all the traits, the ecocentrist ethic and the tech we start with. There is 3 categories for planets that we'll get 80%, 60% or 20% habitability for. Any planet above 40% is worth colonizing, with this build we should get 60% on anything without a modifier, and even then we can build a climate control center to throw an extra 15% habitability. So in short: We can colonize it all. But we're gonna have a constant consumer goods crunch.



Yes, the governor is wearing a top. Anyways, the planet modifiers from left to right are:

Capital - Death World: -100% immigration pull
Almost every creature and plant on this world is deadly to sentient life in some way. Life on this world is unimaginably harsh: fifty percent of the planet's population does not survive infancy, and the fifty percent of the remainder does not live past the age of ten. Those who do reach adulthood are invariably among the toughest, most uncompromising and resourceful warriors, masters of survivng in one of the most inhospitable environments in the galaxy.

Unstable Tectonics: -10% habitability, +20% district cost, +20% building cost and -4 districts. We can actually remove this one when we get the resources
This world has extremely unstable plate tectonics and is prone to massive earthquakes and volcanic activity. After confirming the atmosphere is safe to breathe despite the constant eruptions, our scientists want to study the geology of this planet to better understand its effects.

Blizzards: +10% to consumer goods upkeep, -4 agriculture districts, +20% food upkeep. We're stuck with this
It always tsarts with light snowfall, but this world's weather always follows the same pattern. Light snow, heavy wind and in just a moment's notice, it becomes a full-fledged blizzard. With snowfall so dense you can hardly see the end of your extremities

Gigantic Ocean Dragons: -4 districts. We're stuck with this but why the hell would we want to remove this?
Giant underwater dragons roam the ocean's seafloor. These scaly reptiles can become hundreds of feet long and are seen to be extremely predatory. Their long wings are primarily used as a means of propulsion under water but they also give them the ability to fly short distances above the water. They are the apex predator of this world's oceanic life.

Fucking metal, I refuse to remove that if there was an option. Now on the right side, upper middle you will see a bunch of red filled blocks and -7 next to them. That is our district count, the red filled ones are blockers. And with the planetary modifiers which are independent from the blockers, we have space for -7 districts. Now I want to keep the blockers that give bonuses (for this planet, it has an impassable mountain and active volcano for the heavy blockers and 4 dangerous wildlife blockers which is basically carrying our food needs.) but there are 7 blockers that don't give any bonuses at all, so I'll clear those out as money permits. Once those are all gone and I get the tectonics fixed we'll have a whopping 4 districts to work with.



Annoyingly all pops started as specialists, and there is this thing where if pops of a strata can't get any jobs in that strata, they just become unemployed. You have to wait an absurdly long amount of time (even better, there is a tradition that makes this EVEN LONGER as if that was a problem) before they finally demote. So I don't have any workers, there are no farmers or miners or any of that. Thankfully all the wild animal blockers are providing enough food.

I locked up every specialist job that was open to make sure that any new pops don't immediately promote to a specialist. I also took out a bunch of the scientist jobs because they use more consumer goods than the other specialists as well as the duelist. I had to switch to consumer goods economy which gives a +15% to consumer good output and a hefty -25% to alloy output. And your empire lives or dies on alloys.



The "terraforming ship that was destroyed" line is referencing a ship in the Rimworld LP that got destroyed when a security turret shot its own bridge console.



For my starting leaders, our topless governor has one of the least useful traits, it simply reduces recruitment cost by 50% (doesn't apply here as we started with her) and the upkeep by 50%, which is a saving of 1 whole energy credit. I would replace her, but the only options in the governor pool is another eager trait, one with a trait that just gives a +25% to exp (provided this would be a better one, but not enough to warrant spending the credits now) and one that makes removing tile blockers cheaper which I mean... do you know what gimmick is going on?

For scientists getting a starter science ship commander with meticulous is fucking AMAZING. Of course that means I used up all my luck and I never got another scientist with it, the archeological or survey speed traits



I've got the Expanded Traditions mod which adds a lot more traditions to the game, default only has 5 which means every empire was the same cause by end game everyone had the exact same traditions. I grab nature not just for the RP reasons but it reduces pop food requirement by 15% and consumer goods upkeep by 5%. I was running negative on food and something between 0.1 and 0.9 consumer goods. And I need 200 of both to make colony ships. On top of this we can get +10% habitability (now we are at 52%!), blocker clear costs and time as well as the ability to gain up to 2 random deposits on every single planet.



As to why I had a second science ship just move around without surveying? There have been too many times I've spawned right next to another empire and get blocked in because I surveyed the wrong direction. Just moving everywhere without stopping to survey will let me know if someone is nearby and start directing my surveys in that direction



This event has a 10% chance of spawning, lucky us



One of the events mods I got adds a bunch of anomaly like events to the game. Anomalies require a scientist to stop and research, these things just happen when you scan something. You may need to change your survey policy to "away teams", which gives a -40% penalty to survey speed but gives a +5% chance of getting an anomaly and when we find these, get extra bonuses (note on the bottom: Away team discovery) Depending on your ethics you can do something more, though I think only materialist and corporations can get bonuses. At least I haven't noticed them on any other ethics type. Corporation can monetize anything which means they can get silly amounts of trade value.

I think that is everything that needs explaining gameplay wise, I'll talk about some of the background stuff. The race mod I'm using does have male foxgirls, but with another mod you can dictate the gender of your various leaders (admirals male only, scientists female only, etc).



Finally for the top here. The planet in the Rimworld LP is named Menkalinan Secundus. Now I picked an alpine world because we started in a chilld boreal forest... BUT there IS a boreal planet. Unfortunately its added by a mod and the Death World start doesn't work right with it, it wont give the blockers. And no cheating to terraform it into a boreal, terraforming removes all blockers.

The faction was called Planet's Pact of Malor, so I used Malor as the star name.

The faction flag has red and purple for the devilstrand and manaweave materials that the clothing was made out of. The emblem is somewhat similar to how the archotech spore looked



If you removed the status bar thing in the middle of it