[Video transcript - Draft may contain typos!]
RimWorld Planning
Hi everyone, Adam here with a Rimworld programming guide. I often tell people that the best and most powerful thing I've ever built on RimWorld is the two-phase timeline. I've been using it for 3-4 years now and it's a game changer. However, biphasic is not always the best time. So, in this RimWorld guide, I'll cover all things planning. So if you're wondering "what's the best schedule" or "how to set up a schedule" you've come to the right place!
Well then, "What's the best time?" As with many questions on Rimworld, the answer is "this".
If you want a great all-around schedule that everyone can use at any time, I recommend my two-phase schedule. It has an incredibly powerful effect on mood and the timeline is extremely resilient to the crazy scenarios that take place in Rimworld.
The two-phase schedule isn't really the "best schedule". The best schedule is one that you adjust based on a number of factors such as: B. the balance of productivity and mood, the average overall mood of your colonists, how much sleep your colonist needs, your colonist jobs, your base layout, and even how much your colonists hate everyone else. In this example, I customized the two-phase schedule.
This two-phase schedule is a great option for just about anyone: set everything to something. Start at hour 11. Set 4 sleep blocks: 11-12-13-14. Jump just before midnight: 23: Sleep. So sleep 0-1-2. Then put 2 rests BEFORE each sleep block: Rest 9-10 and 21-22. That's the simple "fits everybody" no need to think about it, Biphasic Schedule. It's so powerful that you can even beat your night owls, and they'll still be happier on average than a typical "night time".
The main reason to use the two-phase timeline is its huge mood boost. Click on a colonist. Click on the Requirements tab. The biphasic has a significant impact on these 3 bars: rest, recovery and comfort. Each notch on these bars corresponds to a different set of sentiments. For example, here is the recovery meter, and here are the different thoughts between notches. The two-phase schedule fills this recovery meter twice a day. What most players call the standard Rimworld schedule fills all of these items once a day.
This double reload helps improve mood because 1) the colonist is twice in those high levels of comfort and rest and 2) the 3 bars for rest, rest and comfort don't drop as much. Each of these 3 bars is falling at a constant rate. After 16 hours awake, a standard time has these 3 meters here. The two-phase schedule never allows these bars to get too low, as Rest, Rest, and Comfort replenish every 12 hours. The feeling is higher because BOTH of these gauges are higher AND those gauges never drop that low.
Here are two copies of the same colonist on the same base with the same jobs. Right: two-phase timeline. Left: standard time. Watch the mood bars throughout the day. Watch the biphasic mood bar get a boost from the afternoon nap.
In general, the two-phase schedule has as much impact on mood compared to a standard plan.
However, the two-phase schedule comes at the cost of some productivity. In this example, the two-phase plan has mined 19 squares of steel. The default plan mined 23 squares of steel. The productivity difference from this example was about 20%. These times pretty much always got the same amount of sleep per day: the total amount of sleep was NOT a factor.
The first big choice in programming: humor versus productivity. In general, the standard plan leads to more productivity. In general, the two-phase schedule gives more disposition. Depending on so many factors, you might care more about mood or productivity.
The original reason I created the two-phase schedule was not to miss attacks because of actual combat, but because they happened later in the day when everyone was at their lowest level. I often had meltdowns during raids and ended up losing colonists or the entire race. Depending on your playstyle, difficulty settings, etc., this might not be that big of an issue for you. Therefore, I will also let you know about other potential timelines that have different costs and benefits that may coincide with your game.
My rule of thumb would be, "You want enough vibes to avoid all mental pauses, including small mental pauses." There's no easy number for how much humor it would be, as circumstances and pawn types vary greatly across RimWorld.
What's good to note is that the feeling does NOT change instantly. Mood can ONLY drop at 8 per hour. In this example, the biphasic plane is 12 tunings above the minor break threshold. That's an hour and a half before shorter breaks are possible. -99 Psychic Drone? Another hour and a half before Minor broke through the territory. At this point, on the default plane, the colonist is in a good mood. The biphasic is in tuning 47. That's 23 mood. The difference in mood is not always that big and depends on numerous factors. It's virtually impossible to calculate the exact difference in mood because, as I always say at RimWorld - it depends.
In my totally unscientific estimate, not based on mathematical experience, I will say that the difference in mood is about 16 with a two-phase schedule compared to a standard schedule. That's 2 hours of mood swings. A long fight like this will generate many mood debuffs like: . That's what the two-phase schedule gives you: 2 extra hours to call your colonists and let them suffer when things get dire on Rimworld.
One reason for the difference in productivity is light. The two-phase timeline sometimes causes colonists to work in the dark more often. In this example, the biphasic programming colonist was working more in the dark. Light's super short synopsis is You Should Consider Working In The Dark to mean: Lazy, 4 copies of the Slowpoke trait, and Pessimistic. Night Owl and Undergrounder essentially remove the pessimistic trait of working in the dark, but do NOT remove the work speed and movement speed penalties.
Most of the productivity difference in this example comes from the extra walking distance of the two-phase schedule. Hiking is a waste of time. Time spent walking is time NOT spent working. If this example were very close, migration would not be a significant factor. If this example were further removed, footpaths would be an even more important factor. How interested you are in hiking is part of the “it depends” I mentioned. For example, maybe your base is very compact and walking is minimal.
Rest and sleep are combined to minimize walking distances. When your colonist returns home from work you want him to fully fill all 3 Rest, Rest and Comfort. If recovery were to be separated from recovery, there would be another walk. To clarify: I refer to the walk home AND the walk back to work as a single walk. I also assume that beds and rest are closely related.
With a schedule like this, with a rest at noon, it's now two walks. A tour to recharge your batteries. Then a walk home to sleep. Simply by combining rest and rest, we eliminate walking, increasing productivity.
Whether you rest before or after sleep, or both, is personal preference. Personally, I prefer to schedule rest before bed. I would consider all of these schedules to be the "standard schedule" and they are all potentially good. Whether you have 1, 2 or 3 recovery bars is important and the answer depends on many factors. The central general concept is 1) A walk. 2) Completely fill ALL rest, rest and comfort in this walk.
In this example I use 1 recovery bar. The colonist notices the recovery. The colonist goes home. The colonist completes the recovery. Then the colonist goes to sleep. In this example, a slash was just right.
If I set the recovery to two bars in this example, the colonist usually takes an extra walk. The colonist fills his recovery meter before the schedule is suspended. The settler then goes back to work, extracts a stone and goes back to bed. This is wasted time. In this particular example, two bars are too big.
In this example, I put the settler on the hunt. In this particular example, two bars are too small. The colonist ends up chasing the entire double recovery bar and losing recovery entirely. You go to sleep with unfulfilled rest.
Sometimes a break is ideal. Sometimes two breaks are perfect. And sometimes you might even need 3. The answer will be different for every settler and job combination. Unfortunately, the answer can also be different on different days for the same colonist. You might not always get the right answer, and that's okay.
Take care of your colonists. Better appreciate what works for you most of the time. You may also have better luck resting before bed or after sleeping, or both. As long as you follow the key concept: "One walk, fill in all the bars", you're doing it right.
If you're not sure or want a simple answer, I'd suggest just going with 2 before bed.
Smurph on my Discord, who helps with many of my channel guides, created this helpful diagram showing the mechanics of each scheduling option. Feel free to pause for reference or visit my website at adamvseverything.com/guides.
Meditation is only available with Royalty DLC. Exact job selection is a little more complicated than shown here: some things, like B. firefighting, can completely override your planning options.
The most important thing you can learn from this infographic is that work and meditation WAKE a sleeping settler up. A colonist who wakes up before filling the remaining bar breaks the most important rule: "A walk fills the bars". Meditation and work AFTER sleep are important and can cause problems with unfilled rest bars.
The next thing to notice is the difference between "Anything" and "Work". “Everything” essentially means “Solve your problems. If there are no problems, then work.” Work means “Ignore your problems. Work." In general, I recommend letting colonists resolve their recovery and rest issues automatically. For this reason, I generally recommend NOT scheduling work hours. However, there may be times when you want your colonists to specifically ignore your issues. Use in these situations Work.
Another thing I want to point out is the sleep thresholds. When sleep is programmed, a colonist will only sleep if their rest bar is below 75%. A rest bar takes almost 4 hours to go from 100% rest to 75% rest. Also, a colonist sleeps during rest and everything else if his rest bar isn't full yet. You don't need to sleep well. Your colonist will automatically sleep until the sleep bar is full, provided you choose All or Sleep Recovery.
There are 6 colonists here, all falling asleep at the same time, each with a different number of sleep bars. They all wake up when rest reaches 100%. Even those who are programmed to stay asleep don't immediately go back to sleep because the sleep indicator is still above 75%.
Sleeping well doesn't matter as the limits are very forgiving.
It is important that the retrieval is correct, as the retrieval can cause further increases.
I recommend that your planning process consist of 3 steps:
1) Choice: How important is your mood, productivity, light or other important factors.
Here are some examples of common basic schedules that need tweaking. Higher on the list means more productivity but less vibrations. Further down the list means more humor but less productivity. There are many other great schedules not shown here.
2) Adjustment: adjust the exact recovery values according to the general rule "One walk: fill bar".
Here we decide to rest before or after sleep, as well as 1, 2 or 3 rest bars. Remember that there is no easy answer. This depends a lot on your colonist, your jobs and the base layout. If you want a good overall assessment, I recommend 2 recoveries before each sleep block.
3) Change the schedule accordingly.
The most famous layer is the "night owl". This simply takes the default schedule and changes it by 12 hours. The other two main reasons for changing schedules are the lack of light and how much your peons hate each other.
The abbreviation for light is midnight is the midpoint of darkness. In general, there are 5 hours of darkness on either side of midnight. This can change depending on the time of year and distance from the equator. In general, if you have colonists working outdoors, try to rest as much as possible during this period of darkness to avoid the mood, movement, and work speed penalties of darkness. If your colonist doesn't work in the dark, you don't have to think about the light.
Social interactions in Rimworld get pretty complicated. There are 3 things that we can minimize a little bit by changing the schedule: insults, social struggles and rejection. The super short summary of these social interactions is that the more your colonists resent each other, the more likely bad things like this will happen when colonists are within 6 squares of each other. Change the schedules of colonists who are likely struggling to minimize their chances of seeing each other and making these things happen.
Let's take our three-step process: Select → Tweak → Shift and apply it to some example scenarios you might be facing.
Example 1: game start
Choose: Between initial optimism, low expectations, and a simple setup like this one with flowers on the ground, the mood can be in control. Choice: productivity and light. I recommend a standard 1-sleep plan, just like the default.
Adaptation → I start with 2 rests before going to sleep. Let's see how it goes.
Hunter's recovery is perfect on that specific day on that specific example basis. Hunter went home, rested and went to sleep immediately. For Hunter 2 is in place today.
In this example, 2 Rest Before Sleep is NOT perfect for Boss. The cook stops planting and goes home to recover. The chef fills up his recovery meter and is still recovering, so they get back to work. You plant 1 Healing Root and then go to bed. That's an extra walk. However, it is a very short walk. It might not be worth fixing.
There is no easy and always correct answer to the question of how much rest. You may have better luck resting after you sleep, or before and after you sleep. Maybe you don't care much for the walks either. In this example, the chef's walk is so short that it's not a big deal. If you don't like hiking and worry about vibrations, don't hesitate to enjoy at the higher end. If you don't mind the weather and are interested in hiking, make it a little shorter.
Try your best to follow the general rule "A walk fills rest, rest and comfort". If you're not sure or don't want to deal with it, just take 2 rests before going to sleep.
Change → As light is important, we will change all 3 standard times one hour earlier to fully integrate your 8 hours of sleep and 2 hours of rest into the 10 hours of darkness.
Hunter is a bloodthirsty, hilariously ugly peasant. Let's change Hunter's programming a bit to minimize social issues like social fights, insults and rejections. The change will cause colonists to interact less with each other as they recover at different times. The move means some rest and sleep outside the 10 hours of darkness, but social issues are more important here.
Example 2: What if the designer is a very neurotic and tortured artist? That's a -22 mood penalty.
Choice: light is very important, but a good mood is more important here. Let's add a second mid-day recovery block. This adds a second hike, but keeps the light out and helps lift the mood. Sometimes there are exceptions to rules like "One hike, fulfill all 3 rest, rest and comfort". Such an extreme scenario would be the exception.
Optimize → Same concept for viewing walks.
Shift → Same concept of light and social issues as before.
Example 3: What if the cook/researcher is a very neurotic tortured artist?
Choice: The chef is further away from the base to sometimes help with planting. They spend most of their time cooking and searching in the light.
Mood is more important than light and more than walks. Time for two-phase timeline.
Adjustment and offset steps are still the same as before. The two-phase schedule fits easily into the standard 10 hours of darkness. Move it wherever you want. If you are basing yourself far from the equator, try to schedule part of your biphasic rest and recreation around midnight.
Example 4: Hunter has muscle parasites. These are likely -5 Sick and -10 Intense Pain mood hits. Also, increasing the residual fall rate means this pawn cannot handle a standard 24 hour and 1 hour sleep schedule. A normal colonist can stay awake for about 16 to 18 hours before experiencing negative sleepy thoughts. A normal colonist sleeps 6-8 hours in most beds. It's a 24-hour schedule: about 16 awake and 8 asleep. A Parasite or Mechanite colonist can only stay awake for about 10 hours before penalties. So they need 8 to 10 hours of sleep. It's 8 pm. This doesn't fit into a standard 24-hour sleep schedule.
Choice: Biphasic. Humor is an issue. The standard sleep schedule doesn't work. The two-phase programming is essentially tailor-made for parasites and muscle mechanisms.
Tweak and Shift as before. Hunter is the hilariously ugly, bloodthirsty, scary respirator. Make sure they are away from others.
We started with a standard plan with 2 rests for each colonist. Then we added some features and some health conditions. Now our 3 colonist timelines look like this...
Example 5: Heavy sleepers, excellent quality beds or people with reduced sleep needs.
A Quick Sleeper settler in an excellent bed needs a little less than 5 hours of sleep. Like a normal healthy colonist, a fast sleeper can remain awake for 18 hours before taking the drowsy mood penalty. That's a total of 23 hours. Quick sleeper dash, extreme quality beds, and other bonuses can make a 24-hour schedule less than perfect.
Option 1: If light is important and the weather is good, go with the default plan. Light can be more important than an occasional drowsy thought or a short nap.
Option 2: If humor is more important, go for the two-phase schedule. The fast sleeper will take two very short naps. Total sleep time is the same. Sleep is easily divided into two parts and is more consistent. No more sleepy thoughts or occasional naps.
Option 3: If the weather is good and light is not a concern, you can switch to the Everything Anything programming. Let them work as hard as possible and resolve any issues that arise. All Anything means your colonist will automatically repair Rest or Recovery when it runs low.
Example 6: Forced Labor Miner
This example base requires Plasteel and the only place to get it is this depth drill far from the base. Someone has to work here, it's far away, and if it breaks we send someone else to do it. WE NEED this Plasteel.
Time to plan the work. You might consider BiPhasic Work, which allows a midday meter top-up, but costs an extra walk.
Remember that this person will ignore your problems during working hours. If something terrible happens and they lose sleep or rest, they won't fix it. In this example, we don't care. Plasteel doesn't degrade on its own and we need it now. Plan the work!
Relaxation combined with sleep fills every meter on a walk. After Sleep allows a colonist to get more sleep when needed, or find rest when lost, or get to work when all is well.
Example 7: Three-phase
Sometimes there are serious mood issues that are so significant that productivity doesn't matter. All that matters is saving these colonists from mental breakdown.
There is a High Psychic Drone and our male colonists are NOT having a good day.
This settler's wife died. You will be extremely unhappy for 30 days.
We accept a survey with visitors expecting good accommodation and not doing any work. The only thing that matters is making them happy.
Planning can greatly improve the mood of all these settlers. We go beyond Biphasic and launch the indescribable Triphasic Contingency Plan! With that, we're trying to keep the comfort bar in the +10 mood range and the recovery meter in the +10 mood range.
The three-phase schedule is for 3 overnight stays. 5 recovery. Repeat 3 times. In three-phase programming, the colonist repeatedly replenishes his comfort meter by jumping into bed every 8 hours. While awake, the colonist will replenish its recovery meter whenever it drops below 95%. Essentially, the colonist performs one or two work tasks and then goes back to rest. Productivity is greatly reduced by all the hiking for recreation. Three-phase programming is for situations where humor is all that matters.
We can maximize the mood boost of three-phase programming with zoning and beauty. The colonist's environment beauty meter is different, but is similar to the beauty stats found in the room stats. By default, you can press the "T" key or click the small "Toggle Beauty Display" button in the lower right corner to view the beauty panel. Mouse over any location. When your colonist is in this location, anything that shows a number will affect your beauty meter.
The number to focus on is the "Beauty here:" number. Each time your colonists are on a 6 beauty tile, they can get +15! Beautifully designed environment. Fancy flowers or flooring can greatly increase the value of salon stats and allow you to easily achieve stunning rooms. However, with flowers, fancy flooring, and the like, you probably CANNOT achieve 6 beauty in most plain tiles. This flower room is a bit overwhelming, but it only hits 2 beauties here. Change to expensive thin carpeting and the room scores 'Extremely Impressive', but the 'Beauty Here' number only scores a 3.5. This is only enough for +5 Pretty Environment. We want to reach +15 Beautiful Environments.
The default option to get 6+ Beauty Here is to use Sculptures. Position sculptures strategically to maximize the impact of their beauty. Position the sculpture so that its beauty covers the areas your settlers frequently visit. The main areas to beautify with sculpture are dining tables and relaxation furniture. Keep adding sculptures until all these areas reach 6 beauty. If the room is larger than a narrow hallway, the colonist also creates Spacious Interior +5.
Now make sure the grumpy colonists are limited to just the essential locations. Create a zone that includes your bed, your food, and the beautified dining and relaxation area. With three-phase scheduling and zoning, our grumpy colonists can permanently get these mood boosts:
+10 Recovery Completely satisfied
+10 Luxuriously comfortable
+15 beautiful environments
+5 spacious interior
That's +40! Mood and we still haven't included the Stunning Dining and Recreation Rooms buff.
Let's use these techniques and kill this colonist's wife and dog... for science! This combination barracks, dining room, and hall with a concrete floor has several easy-to-make wood carvings. We strategically place the sculptures near the table and rest. Beauty finds 6. Let's create a zone to confine this colonist to the nearby area and place him in Triphasic. Let's watch their mood. Wow, look at that, it's like he never had a family or pets!
As I said earlier, there isn't a single best way to plan your settlers. Different colonists, base layouts and playstyles have very different requirements.
First choose what is most important to you: productivity, mood, light? Choose a schedule type that meets your needs. Options include standard schedule, forced schedule, All Anything schedule, two phases or even three phases. Other times not shown here can also be fantastic options - there's no one way to play.
If you want a schedule that works well for everyone, pretty much all of the time, and that you really never have to think about, put everyone on the standard two-phase schedule: 2 rests, followed by 4 sleeps, then 6 whatever.
This schedule is extremely good, but if you're willing to put in the extra time and effort, you might do better by choosing the schedule that works for you and the colonist in question, and then tweaking and moving around accordingly. specific. 🇧🇷 The planning options are so powerful that your peasants can have a wife and a dog murdered, and it doesn't matter, they will never collapse.
Conclusion
And does! I hope this Rimworld timetable guide has helped you understand RimWorld timetables and choose the BEST TIME for you.
If you enjoyed this Rimworld guide or if it helped you in any way, you can subscribe to the channel, like the video, leave a comment below and share it with others. If you'd like to link to a written version of this guide, be sure to visit my website at adamvseverything.com/guides.
And as always, thanks for watching!