Intermediate Midgame Guide

Overview

In some ways, Midgame is vastly different from early game in RimWorld. Sometimes the point comes that you have to use devious tactics when your colony is helplessly outnumbered, or drastically change the priorities of your colonists.

Failsafes

There are many types of ways you can set up buildings on your map to possibly save your colonists' lives in dire situations:

• Shelters: If your colony relies on hunting for food(tundra, desert, etc) building small rooms with an emergency food and wood supply can save your colonists from enraged animals.
• Backup power: Many events will cause you to lose power if you are unprepared. Some colonies rely on wind or solar power to power everything, and eventually every colony with electricity will suffer from a fault conduit explosion, also show as 'Zzzt...' Both cases will cause you to lose power, whether it's not enough wind or sun, or an explosion. Raider attacking and destroying power conduits connected to power generators can sever power from the colony, reducing the power available.

Always have spare power sources and storages, including multiple battery systems with switches. Have a handful of batteries constantly connected to the main grid, and only connect extra when they are about to run out, or are charging.

Midgame combat & defense tactics

When you are outnumbered, thinking smart with your combat tactics is also key to not losing colonists. It's also worth checking out defense tactics with more in-depth detail in defensive strategy, and cover for how cover works.

Turret mounds

Sometimes sandbags and your colonists alone are just not enough. Building "turret mounds" around the map in strategic locations can decimate a good number of raiders before they even get to the colony. Turret mounds are built on a 3x3 block of land:

O#O
###
O#O

Where O is a turret and # is a stone wall. Remember, however, that turrets can be a bit expensive to build and repair. They also require a lot of electricity, so try hooking them up to a wire which is remotely turned on to save your batteries.

Note that you will have to sacrifice some turrets this way as raiders often target the turrets before your colonists due to proximity.

Diffusing your opponent

Don't be too arrogant when facing a bombardment of arrows and pila - each can deal almost an equivalent amount of damage as a survival rifle. Diffusing your opponent consists of separating the melee attackers from the ranged, and dealing with each of them with your melee and ranged colonists.

One way of diffusing your opponent is with a smaller version of an attention suppressor. This means that the majority of raiders will end up attacking the walls instead of your colonists. Those that come through can be easily dealt with using tactics from the next section. You can also use turret mounds as mentioned above surrounded by a nest of rock chunks to to catch the raiders in the explosion.

Fighting in the small numbers

Once you have diffused your opponent's army, their forces will trickle towards you slowly so you can easily deal with each one alone.

Kiting

Kiting is the method of using a colonist as bait for an attacker to run towards, and a second colonist taking shots off while the attacker is focused on the first. It does not work if the raider has a personal shield that protects them from bullets. Note: Colonists incapable of violence can still act as bait.

         R
 C       |
         v
         C

Diagram of kiting. C is a colonist, R is a raider and -> is the direction the raider is going.

Splitting

When two of your colonists are being chased by one person and your weaponry is significantly poorer than the attacker's, you can conduct a split so that the enemy can only chase and down 1 colonist while the other escapes. If one of your colonists has ranged weapons, then you could split and then conduct a kite.

Rushing

Rushing is the tactic of sending your best melee attackers to finish off the ranged attackers at the back. The ranged attackers who do not succumb to the attention suppressor could be a pain for your own ranged forces, so it's best to send your melee colonists with personal shields to distract the ranged attackers. Before battle, hide your melee attackers behind a nearby hill outside your base so that they remain hidden until all enemy melee attackers are engaged with either the walls or your ranged.

Resources

As of version 0.16.1393 (21 December 2016), players can form and travel around in caravans, as well as transport pods. This greatly opens trade opportunities and enables the player to command multiple colonies (options) at once. It also raises the importance of Silver and economics in the game, as well as, inevitably, drug trafficking. For the average colony, earning money mainly relies on either cash crops like Smokeleaf, stone sculptures or the brutal treatment of prisoners. It is important for every colony to select at least one of these options as their main income source, to obtain important resources like Steel. If you want to run multiple colonies, then you can start a mining base in a colony nearby. Useful resources include:

• Medicine to keep colonists alive
• Plasteel for durable constructs and high-end equipment
• Wood and Stone Blocks to make your base
• Components and steel to make non-primitive things
• Silver to barter for nearly anything

Other guides to improve your gameplay

Continuing guided play

• Advanced Endgame Guide: Ending your colony on YOUR terms