Why are Thrumbos so deadly and hard to kill? It's because they have long been hunted for their horns, so of course they would have to be tough and deadly to survive!
Except that, in the real world, elephants are adapting to being hunted for their tusks by simply not growing tusks anymore. Acceptable Breaks from Reality prevails here: it's more fun to assume that thrumbos adapted by becoming deadlier.
Fridge Funny: It's possible to get animals drunk/high. Like humans, they can also develop addictions and risk overdosing. They will do this entirely on their own and you can't easily make them stop.
The fact that crops grow relatively quickly (usually within a week of being plantednote bear in mind that a Rimworld year only has 60 days, meaning a 7 day growth period comes out to about 42 real-life days, which is still impressively short) makes a lot more sense when you look at the lore. Every rimworld that you play on has been terraformed by some past civilization, and all of the plants are technically genetically-manipulated wonder-crops. Of course they would grow rapidly.
The degree of threat that your colony faces depends heavily on both your population and the wealth of the colony. Not only are the threats growing because pirates and hostile tribes want to steal your wealth, but the size and advanced technology draws in larger insect infestations, and mechanoids come in larger swarms. This actually explains why tribals are so common despite more advanced technology being available: a low-tech society leaves a smaller footprint and presence on the planet and can thus more easily survive. They won't be living in modern comfort but they won't risk death from huge hordes of murderous robots. This could also explain why low-tech tribals are trying to wipe out a high-tech colony: your advanced technology may draw in more mechanoids that would be a threat to the tribals.
This would also explain why there is such a wide gap in technology between primitive tribals and modern/spacer tech factions. Aside from deliberately living a primitive lifestyle that gives them natural access to psycasts, the ready availability of higher-tech weapons means that if a tribe wanted to use more advanced technology, it wouldn't be too difficult to get access to modern and future armor or weapons. Thus there isn't much of a reason for there to be any factions with technology in between low-tech and modern/spacer.
The symbol of one unit of silver is $ not just out of simple convenience; it was the actual symbol of one 16th century New Spaniard silver peso, which contained one ounce troy of silver.
Insectoids are bred to aggressively attack and destroy Mechanoids. There's a good chance that they register any advanced technology able to move on its own as "mechanoid" and attack it - hence why there are no cars or war walkers left intact and everyone moves around on foot or via drop pods. Driving around in cars would draw the attention of dormant insect hives.
The Biotech expansion also has one of the consequences of pollution being that insects will awaken from hibernation in response to it to attack whatever is making the pollution. This would explain why neither cars nor large-scale industry has taken off and why there is no middle ground between relatively-clean spacer tech and tribals. An industrial revolution that should be viable would be wiped out by insects in short order due to the sheer volume of pollution. On the rimworlds, you go clean or go primitive.
Why are you forced to scavenge steel from ruins and "compacted steel" deposits, instead of forging it yourself? Well, because forging steel from iron requires coal, and since the planet the game is set on was terraformed only a few thousand years ago, it obviously has no fossil fuels.
Of course, there ARE trees, and charcoal is a real-life source of carbon for making steel.
Fridge Horror
Each pawn has two ages: a chronological age that shows how long they existed since birth, including time spent in cryostasis, and actual age, their normal biological age. Given that faster-than-light travel doesn't exist in this game, most have chronological ages well into the hundreds after traveling in sleeper ships. Some of these people are truly alone, having outlived their friends, relatives, and the rest of their support network. In addition, it is possible for pawns to be chronological and even biologically older than their own parents.
Think about the game for a minute. Your pawns are not highly skilled, well-disciplined colonists landing on a planet of their choosing. They are average Joes forced to land on a hostile world through some unspecified disaster, most of which are initially unsuited for their new environment due to their personalities, ailments, and professions. Even if some of these pawns are skilled in medicine, agriculture, construction, and combat, they may very well find themselves overworked doing what only they can do well. Worst case scenario, your colony could be full of pacifists who are incapable of dumb labor or too unhealthy to work or psychologically unstable, dooming everyone before even the first serious band of raiders come knocking.
Notice how it's possible to get meteorites delivering sedimentary rocks like limestone and sandstone to your planet? Considering that a "planetkiller" game over is possible, it's not implausible that these were once part of another planet that has been deliberately blown up.
Everything about the Archotech AIs, if you put yourself in the shoes of your pawns. Somewhere out there exist incomprehensibly powerful minds capable of warping reality from lightyears away just by thinking about it. No one knows what they want, no one can even begin to understand their reasoning. They might ignore you forever, but if their eyes fall on your colony, they might give you a gift beyond your wildest imagination... or they might Mind Rape you into insanity instead, or make you disappear into thin air, or do something else entirely. Why? How? You'll never know. The only thing you do know for sure is that there's virtually nothing you can do about it; not you, not anyone else, including the most advanced ultratech militaries among your allies. It's moments like these that can let Rimworld slip from hard scifi into Cosmic Horror Story territory, especially on harder difficulty settings where Archotech interference happens more frequently. That most Archotechs were initially created by humans only makes it worse.
One of the win scenarios involve you selecting a few colonists to upload themselves into an archotech after a long quest that require them to give up a colony three times in exchange for the map pieces used to locate the thing. Given the incomprehensible mental processes of this superintelligence, their ultimate fate is open to interpretation...
As discussed on the main page, it's unclear where pawns' orders come from and they'll never refuse them short of a mental break - there's no in-universe delivery method, they simply know their instructions and act on them. But if the player is playing from the point of view of an Archotech, then it's easily explainable - as does the ease with which pawns will commit atrocities like organ harvesting, slavery, andeating bugs.Every single pawn could be brainwashed by one of these mechanical gods.
Introduced in Biotech, ripscanners forcibly rip out the hapless pawns' neural pathways and stick them in a storage device, killing them in the process. For the sake of your sanity, you better hope the victims doesn't have full awareness in their new state because if they do...
One quest you will get is about the Exodus Imperium wanting to conduct some weapon tests nearby but is obliged to ask for your permission if you hold a royal title since the tests in question will cause your colony to experience adverse weather events, such as fog and eclipse. If none of your colonists hold a title, you may begin to wonder if that cold snap that killed your harvest or that EMP burst that fried your electronics during the dead of summer were entirely natural. Also, one wonders exactly 'what' weapons the Imperium is testing.
Fridge Logic
As of 1.3, mortars can only be built with special reinforced barrels that, no matter your tech level, you cannot craft, and orbital traders are supposedly rare out on the Rim. So where is everyone else getting them?
From those same traders, most likely. Either that or military vessels that have crashlanded or from larger settlements that are more industrialized, like the Empire. Alternately, you can just ignore that by selecting the Classic Mortars option when setting your storyteller.
