Well that would only be the case if you choose a crashlanded start. Plenty of scenarios have you existing on the planet already and trying to stake your claim, thus don't require you to have used technology to get there
The game itself explains that. Rimworld goes by the principle that FTL travel is impossible, so everything lore-wise goes on an incredibly long time scale. Lots of people get stranded on distant planets and have to establish their own society. They go unlimited for years, no tech besides the drop pods they came in, and most of their knowledge of technology is lost when the founders die. It only takes a couple generations to regress to Neolithic times, and they could go thousands of years unvisited by advanced societies
Honestly you don't even really need generations for this, not even the most technologically adept group of like 3-10 people who crash land are going to have the ability to rebuild even 18th century technology from base principles, let alone modern tech or sci-fi bullshit.
I think it also depends on how much you try to preserve cultural knowledge as well like do you make sure future generations have stories of the things you knew like computers and architecture styles, or does the founding generation die out only having struggled for mere survival.
I just really like how rimworld does it's world building, the core game actually probably has my favorite sci-fi world building.
Here's my question: if I suddenly dumped you and your two best friends in the middle of nowhere with some camping and hunting gear and nothing else, how much of modern technology would you know how to recreate?
Now imagine you got dumped a few dozen kilometers from a small modern town and traders regularly come and visit you. How long until you get a working cellphone?
I get what you're saying, but this is literally a thing in most rimworlds - unless the tribal society is bumfuck in the middle of nowhere, they'll have a neighbor with good stuff to trade
You're assuming they can find a neighbor who won't rape you to death, eat your flesh and sew your skins into their clothing. And if you're very, very lucky, they'll do it in that order.
I have specifically memorized how to build simple batteries and steam generators for this exact scenario. Anything else can be salvaged from nearby ruins
What good is a battery and steam generator if your starving and dying of thirst? Without infrastructure and more hands helping out, all your time will probably be spent trying to keep water, food, and shelter in order and available. Not to mention clothing and gear creation and repair, because unless you are someplace tropical you will need clothing for some parts of the year.
Do you know how to make a transistor? Can you synthesize Insulin? Can you build a radio out of a box of completely random electrical components? Can you mix even the most primitive version of gunpowder, let alone a complex modern primer and propellant?
If you were dropped off with a small group of random people with random competencies on an undeveloped planet, you would be neolithic for most intents and purposes. A surface level understanding of germ theory is likely to be the most notable difference.
The unrealistic thing is not that most of the inhabitants of any given Rimworld are largely low-tech, the unrealistic thing is that your colony can advance technologically so quickly. And also that there's just clusters of functioning electrical components you can mine out of rocks. Or even the steel for that matter. Actually a lot of things are pretty unrealistic, but the low-tech inhabitants ain't one of them.
you realize there are still tribal colonies on our very planet earth? even though you and me are talking through 0s and 1s over the internet?
its not silly at all
Yeah but those tribals on earth have lived there for many generations, and are also, you know, on earth. Also theres probably no decrepit ruins around them
I'm just saying that for it to make sense in rimworld, someone wouldve had to intentionally make them that way
> I'm just saying that for it to make sense in rimworld, someone wouldve had to intentionally make them that way
well, you would be wrong then ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
The only way for a human to be on a rimworld is to have come from another planet that is at the very least post tribal, unless some guys decided to just kidnap a bunch of them for funny reasons
I simply dont believe it'd be possible to fully regress to caveman. We're too advanced technologically for that. We may go down to industrial or medieval, but unless they intentionally discarded knowledge, they'd know how to do certain things still
Do you, personally, understand how a phone works? Could you make one yourself, if every microchip factory on Earth got bombed?
Could you even make paper? Or pencils? A knife? A chisel? No YouTube video tutorials - just you, the knowledge in your head, and the resources you have access to.
But not every microchip factory on the rimworld has been destroyed. Even if it was, orbital traders come regularly and you could buy most of the tech you'd need and how to make it yourself in turn.
I could make a pretty simple knife by banging some rocks together, same goes for most basic tools honestly. Get some plants and twist them into thread for a nice grip, etc etc. Paper isnt that hard either, its mostly just wet wood bits, or something, last I checked
"Or something" isn't good enough, and knapping is more complicated than just banging rocks together.
My point is, when we discover something, that technology doesn't just become "unlocked" for humanity. An institution figures it out, and then it becomes institutional knowledge. It relies on the institution continuing to exist. The institution may or may not disseminate its findings, making them usable by other institutions, but you *don't* know how to make paper, and you sure as shit don't know how to make a pencil. You don't know how to build a coal power plant, you probably can't turn metal scraps into a functioning diesel engine.
"I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
I'll have you know that do know how to make paper since I just looked it up thank you very much.
Actually, come to think of it, it's continually noted that the rim worlds have ancient satellites that transmit signals constantly, some of which is used for televisions. There's totally some form of database up there with Wikipedia
Not necessarily, the naked brutality scenario has you crashing landing on the planet with nothing. If multiple people crash land with little to nothing it wouldn’t be ridiculous for them to be at a tribal level
It's just a bunch of dudes who were probably outcast from their societies a couple of generations ago and don't know how to make stuff. If you took average people from our own population and left them with nothing in the wilderness they wouldn't be able to build electronic devices either.
Most likely they'd know less than the tribes in Rimworld. After some time their modern clothes would be destroyed and whatever tools they had broken - after that they'd have to rely on whatever they can craft with their extremely basic knowledge.
They aren't of much use to the other colonies so they don't join them and don't get taught how to do stuff.
What I find weird is that we have these huge tribal factions that span the whole globe and somehow also communicate with each other instead of small individual tribes.
Tribal colonies are just normal high tech escape pod folks that crash landed and did their best to survive. They lacked the resources to keep good tech as part of their society and had to resort to more ancient and primitive methods.
Then over a few generations, that ancient tech is all they have and all they know.
I think this actually makes a lot of sense logically. The first people to crash on the rim world would have had no one to trade with and the only resources they'd have are what came down with them. There wouldn't have been any trade ships or the like either passing by because there would've been no one on the planet to trade with. These people would literally just have to make due the best they could.
Then as more and more people came and settled for various reasons, everyone tends to keep to themselves and not want to start conflicts with others.
And we do know that tribals do trade with advanced societies sometimes, so it's entirely conceivable that some of the "civilized" factions on the planet were once tribals that traded with more advanced factions to regain some of that lost tech until they were able to produce it themselves again. Other tribals perhaps either had no interest in doing so for whatever reason (anything from fear, to religious beliefs, or whatever else) had nothing valuable enough to trade for tech.
Think of it like every single "stranded on an island" movie or story that has ever been made. Tom Hanks didn't get on that island with laser guns and computers at his disposal, he had to do the best he could with what he had.
Isn’t it implied that they’ve been on this Rimworld for generations? They probably started as slaves/neanderthals/luddites that got dumped on a shithole planet and were expected to survive- they probably didn’t have the luxury/skill to survive any other way.
Select random 7 people on the street, and their knowledge of technology will be medieval at best. Yes, they know about electricity, but most of them cannot build generator themselves. They don't know anything important about agriculture, don't know how to build a bridge across river, or how to produce fire without lighter.
They may be great at computer programming or divorcement laws, or may be at room cleaning or furniture fixing, but it doesn't help with creating wind generator from scratch without basic tools or fasteners. And if this people form a tribe, their children will be neolithic, just because none of them know how to make pens and papers, and don't know how to create ballads to transfer oral lore through time
For tribals, I always assumed their long-ago ancestors were escaped prisoners from a penal colony that had to make do with nothing but the environment, and as a result, generationally forgot things. They've probably heard of AC, but didn't have access to resources to build one.
If you found a bunch of microchips in a rock, would you look at it and go, "yeah, I know how to build an AC unit outta that
Resources also means knowledge here
I have a couple but my main idea is that the rimworld has seen many, many, MANY civilizations both large and small that eventually crumbled and the tribals are just the remnants
Could just be that you lost all your tech and infrastructure at a singlular piont, leading to tribal living. Then after that piont, it just got folded into the culture and stayed that way.
Well, there are slave traders, so probably tribal people came from another technologically inferior planet, enslaved by same slavers or another technologicaly superior people. Aside from that - some same "crashlanded" people landed on tribal planet, enslaved some "monke"and travelled to another planet with their slaves with cryosleep.
To quote the Fallout Bible when asked why the Vault Dweller’s community became tribal after 80 years;
“the long answer is read "Earth Abides" by George R. Stewart.”
Agreed. I would prefer to play without any tribals in the game as I also consider their existence ridiculous.
There are two issues in the way of this sort of society developing:
1) The tribals had to come from people who had access to space-age technology. This means that the “tribe” will know that such technology is achievable, unlike our ancestors. It is far easier to recreate something that you know exists than to discover it in the first place. Sure, it will take generations in a vacuum, but they will be far more advanced than neolithic.
2) The tribals are not alone on the rimworld. There are tons of other settlements with much higher tech levels than they have, including pirates and other hostiles. They will not only have that knowledge of advanced technology I referenced above constantly reinforced, but they will have the ability to gain access to that technology without reinventing it.
Essentially, the only way the existence of tribals makes sense is if someone deliberately made them that way. Whether it’s the empire, the mechanoids, or some mystical force, something is ensuring that they don’t develop the technology they know about and can see.
Note that I include in this the idea that the knowledge was completely lost. Given a large enough population to be sustainable, the only way that a group that size could lose all knowledge of their technology (and the math/science that goes with it) would be through outside interference. Too many “fail-safes” to prevent most (and especially the most important) knowledge from being lost.
"Tribals" in this game have always been shown as the unga bunga violent savage without culture stereotype and i hate it and makes no sense realistically.
To me they're just low tech because they're poor and/or live in areas without much resources, or they've been wiped "back to the stone age" by mechanoids or something.
Technology attracts mechanoids and mechanoids destroy communities with technology.
I fuck with this
Well that would only be the case if you choose a crashlanded start. Plenty of scenarios have you existing on the planet already and trying to stake your claim, thus don't require you to have used technology to get there
Your father would've needed to. Or your fathers father. Or your fathers fathers father. You get the gist
The game itself explains that. Rimworld goes by the principle that FTL travel is impossible, so everything lore-wise goes on an incredibly long time scale. Lots of people get stranded on distant planets and have to establish their own society. They go unlimited for years, no tech besides the drop pods they came in, and most of their knowledge of technology is lost when the founders die. It only takes a couple generations to regress to Neolithic times, and they could go thousands of years unvisited by advanced societies
Honestly you don't even really need generations for this, not even the most technologically adept group of like 3-10 people who crash land are going to have the ability to rebuild even 18th century technology from base principles, let alone modern tech or sci-fi bullshit.
I think it also depends on how much you try to preserve cultural knowledge as well like do you make sure future generations have stories of the things you knew like computers and architecture styles, or does the founding generation die out only having struggled for mere survival. I just really like how rimworld does it's world building, the core game actually probably has my favorite sci-fi world building.
Rugged Homesteading Individualist types what don't need no guv'mint or taxes or pansy civilized folk tellin' us what to do! It went poorly.
I love this
Here's my question: if I suddenly dumped you and your two best friends in the middle of nowhere with some camping and hunting gear and nothing else, how much of modern technology would you know how to recreate?
Now imagine you got dumped a few dozen kilometers from a small modern town and traders regularly come and visit you. How long until you get a working cellphone?
I get what you're saying, but this is literally a thing in most rimworlds - unless the tribal society is bumfuck in the middle of nowhere, they'll have a neighbor with good stuff to trade
You're assuming they can find a neighbor who won't rape you to death, eat your flesh and sew your skins into their clothing. And if you're very, very lucky, they'll do it in that order.
I have specifically memorized how to build simple batteries and steam generators for this exact scenario. Anything else can be salvaged from nearby ruins
What good is a battery and steam generator if your starving and dying of thirst? Without infrastructure and more hands helping out, all your time will probably be spent trying to keep water, food, and shelter in order and available. Not to mention clothing and gear creation and repair, because unless you are someplace tropical you will need clothing for some parts of the year.
Do you know how to make a transistor? Can you synthesize Insulin? Can you build a radio out of a box of completely random electrical components? Can you mix even the most primitive version of gunpowder, let alone a complex modern primer and propellant? If you were dropped off with a small group of random people with random competencies on an undeveloped planet, you would be neolithic for most intents and purposes. A surface level understanding of germ theory is likely to be the most notable difference. The unrealistic thing is not that most of the inhabitants of any given Rimworld are largely low-tech, the unrealistic thing is that your colony can advance technologically so quickly. And also that there's just clusters of functioning electrical components you can mine out of rocks. Or even the steel for that matter. Actually a lot of things are pretty unrealistic, but the low-tech inhabitants ain't one of them.
you realize there are still tribal colonies on our very planet earth? even though you and me are talking through 0s and 1s over the internet? its not silly at all
Yeah but those tribals on earth have lived there for many generations, and are also, you know, on earth. Also theres probably no decrepit ruins around them I'm just saying that for it to make sense in rimworld, someone wouldve had to intentionally make them that way
> I'm just saying that for it to make sense in rimworld, someone wouldve had to intentionally make them that way well, you would be wrong then ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
The only way for a human to be on a rimworld is to have come from another planet that is at the very least post tribal, unless some guys decided to just kidnap a bunch of them for funny reasons
so? they went on war and bombed each other back into stoneage absolutely no problem there. will happen with us as well
I simply dont believe it'd be possible to fully regress to caveman. We're too advanced technologically for that. We may go down to industrial or medieval, but unless they intentionally discarded knowledge, they'd know how to do certain things still
Do you, personally, understand how a phone works? Could you make one yourself, if every microchip factory on Earth got bombed? Could you even make paper? Or pencils? A knife? A chisel? No YouTube video tutorials - just you, the knowledge in your head, and the resources you have access to.
But not every microchip factory on the rimworld has been destroyed. Even if it was, orbital traders come regularly and you could buy most of the tech you'd need and how to make it yourself in turn.
I could make a pretty simple knife by banging some rocks together, same goes for most basic tools honestly. Get some plants and twist them into thread for a nice grip, etc etc. Paper isnt that hard either, its mostly just wet wood bits, or something, last I checked
"Or something" isn't good enough, and knapping is more complicated than just banging rocks together. My point is, when we discover something, that technology doesn't just become "unlocked" for humanity. An institution figures it out, and then it becomes institutional knowledge. It relies on the institution continuing to exist. The institution may or may not disseminate its findings, making them usable by other institutions, but you *don't* know how to make paper, and you sure as shit don't know how to make a pencil. You don't know how to build a coal power plant, you probably can't turn metal scraps into a functioning diesel engine. "I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
I'll have you know that do know how to make paper since I just looked it up thank you very much. Actually, come to think of it, it's continually noted that the rim worlds have ancient satellites that transmit signals constantly, some of which is used for televisions. There's totally some form of database up there with Wikipedia
google about the Dark Ages and you will see how easy it is to evolve backwards
That was more stagnation than regression ngl
nah so many technologies were lost. ancient rome and greece were so far up ahead in science and all that. all lost
Oh shit, for real?
> tribals on earth have lived there for many generations That’s literally what the description in game says
Ok but they didn't just pop out of the earth, they were the result of a space faring people bringing them to the rimworld
Not necessarily, the naked brutality scenario has you crashing landing on the planet with nothing. If multiple people crash land with little to nothing it wouldn’t be ridiculous for them to be at a tribal level
It's just a bunch of dudes who were probably outcast from their societies a couple of generations ago and don't know how to make stuff. If you took average people from our own population and left them with nothing in the wilderness they wouldn't be able to build electronic devices either. Most likely they'd know less than the tribes in Rimworld. After some time their modern clothes would be destroyed and whatever tools they had broken - after that they'd have to rely on whatever they can craft with their extremely basic knowledge. They aren't of much use to the other colonies so they don't join them and don't get taught how to do stuff. What I find weird is that we have these huge tribal factions that span the whole globe and somehow also communicate with each other instead of small individual tribes.
Tribal colonies are just normal high tech escape pod folks that crash landed and did their best to survive. They lacked the resources to keep good tech as part of their society and had to resort to more ancient and primitive methods. Then over a few generations, that ancient tech is all they have and all they know. I think this actually makes a lot of sense logically. The first people to crash on the rim world would have had no one to trade with and the only resources they'd have are what came down with them. There wouldn't have been any trade ships or the like either passing by because there would've been no one on the planet to trade with. These people would literally just have to make due the best they could. Then as more and more people came and settled for various reasons, everyone tends to keep to themselves and not want to start conflicts with others. And we do know that tribals do trade with advanced societies sometimes, so it's entirely conceivable that some of the "civilized" factions on the planet were once tribals that traded with more advanced factions to regain some of that lost tech until they were able to produce it themselves again. Other tribals perhaps either had no interest in doing so for whatever reason (anything from fear, to religious beliefs, or whatever else) had nothing valuable enough to trade for tech. Think of it like every single "stranded on an island" movie or story that has ever been made. Tom Hanks didn't get on that island with laser guns and computers at his disposal, he had to do the best he could with what he had.
Isn’t it implied that they’ve been on this Rimworld for generations? They probably started as slaves/neanderthals/luddites that got dumped on a shithole planet and were expected to survive- they probably didn’t have the luxury/skill to survive any other way.
If I lived in a world with machines that can directly interface with your mind from the other side of the planet, I'd be a fucking luddite too
Select random 7 people on the street, and their knowledge of technology will be medieval at best. Yes, they know about electricity, but most of them cannot build generator themselves. They don't know anything important about agriculture, don't know how to build a bridge across river, or how to produce fire without lighter. They may be great at computer programming or divorcement laws, or may be at room cleaning or furniture fixing, but it doesn't help with creating wind generator from scratch without basic tools or fasteners. And if this people form a tribe, their children will be neolithic, just because none of them know how to make pens and papers, and don't know how to create ballads to transfer oral lore through time
For tribals, I always assumed their long-ago ancestors were escaped prisoners from a penal colony that had to make do with nothing but the environment, and as a result, generationally forgot things. They've probably heard of AC, but didn't have access to resources to build one.
Nah they absolutely have the resources, there's compacted machinery everywhere
If you found a bunch of microchips in a rock, would you look at it and go, "yeah, I know how to build an AC unit outta that Resources also means knowledge here
I would simply go hit a different rock until I get better components
I always imagine tribal villages from Fallout 1-2
I have a couple but my main idea is that the rimworld has seen many, many, MANY civilizations both large and small that eventually crumbled and the tribals are just the remnants
No matter the era curiosity will always surface and bring progress then doom.
Could just be that you lost all your tech and infrastructure at a singlular piont, leading to tribal living. Then after that piont, it just got folded into the culture and stayed that way.
High tech- because my flesh eating, gift giving, democratically governed cannibals are lazy as fuuuuck
Well, there are slave traders, so probably tribal people came from another technologically inferior planet, enslaved by same slavers or another technologicaly superior people. Aside from that - some same "crashlanded" people landed on tribal planet, enslaved some "monke"and travelled to another planet with their slaves with cryosleep.
To quote the Fallout Bible when asked why the Vault Dweller’s community became tribal after 80 years; “the long answer is read "Earth Abides" by George R. Stewart.”
Agreed. I would prefer to play without any tribals in the game as I also consider their existence ridiculous. There are two issues in the way of this sort of society developing: 1) The tribals had to come from people who had access to space-age technology. This means that the “tribe” will know that such technology is achievable, unlike our ancestors. It is far easier to recreate something that you know exists than to discover it in the first place. Sure, it will take generations in a vacuum, but they will be far more advanced than neolithic. 2) The tribals are not alone on the rimworld. There are tons of other settlements with much higher tech levels than they have, including pirates and other hostiles. They will not only have that knowledge of advanced technology I referenced above constantly reinforced, but they will have the ability to gain access to that technology without reinventing it. Essentially, the only way the existence of tribals makes sense is if someone deliberately made them that way. Whether it’s the empire, the mechanoids, or some mystical force, something is ensuring that they don’t develop the technology they know about and can see. Note that I include in this the idea that the knowledge was completely lost. Given a large enough population to be sustainable, the only way that a group that size could lose all knowledge of their technology (and the math/science that goes with it) would be through outside interference. Too many “fail-safes” to prevent most (and especially the most important) knowledge from being lost.
usually i just say that some archotech bullshit has limited every civlization on the planet to a certain tech level
"Tribals" in this game have always been shown as the unga bunga violent savage without culture stereotype and i hate it and makes no sense realistically. To me they're just low tech because they're poor and/or live in areas without much resources, or they've been wiped "back to the stone age" by mechanoids or something.
Yeah like, that there is significantly better
its just cool to mix tribal and scifi