RimWorld is a story simulator, as chief developer Tainen Sylvester calls it. The simulator allows you to create the conditions in which the story and character development will take place. Including direct character control in many aspects.

Сolony is a settlement of characters, a house built by them, a place where the main events of the story take place. Colony management - resource extraction, distribution of responsibilities between characters, architecture planning, this and much more is the basis of the simulation process. We set the conditions and observe how the characters behave and what our story will turn into.

Build is a list of DLCs and mods that specify a range of possible conditions and a set of mechanics to control the simulation. Making an assembly a build is a separate creative process that allows you to create the potential for special, unique stories. Whether it's the Middle Ages, cyberpunk, or the world of magic and necromancers, you can put it in the build.

I have a colony on the build for version 1.5. I made timelapses and event feeds with it (you can see them here). The final goal of this colony was to launch a ship with characters into space, and upon achieving it, I was going to continue development on a new build for version 1.6.

My colony has 47 colonists and 450+ animals.

One of the features is a large base, in which there are more diagonal walls than ordinary flat ones.

It took a lot of time to build such a base, and building it again even in developer mode will take more time than I am willing to devote to it. I want to transfer it all at once and continue the life of the colony on a new build. And it's not that impossible, but such a transfer has many nuances, without knowing which you can give up when faced with obstacles. So, that you can have help with this task at hand, I am writing this guide.

It can accurately copy the map surface, buildings, items, objects, pawns, and animals. It cannot copy the paint for the floor covering, except for carpets. It is used if you want to transfer the entire map, not just the colony, as well as for the preliminary general transfer of the map from one build to another build. If you want to transfer a colony within the same build, just between different worlds or different maps, then this tool is not required.

To transfer characters, resources, and items.

For the transfer of base structures and floor coverings.

To accurately position the base on the new map.

To transfer your finely tuned lists of machine instructions.

Parts of my base are right next to the border, so I definitely need this mod.

An order to disassemble the cable. Since version 1.6, this mod has been integrated into the game. It is needed if the transfer is going to take place inside 1.5.

To change the size of the area of the automatic home zone detection.

To help you get a home zone just above the buildings.

To unload portable items with a single tap.

To place large objects on the map, the camera must be moved far above.

Clear area (rect). Debug action. 

The action of clearing the map of any objects (except covering) in the specified area.

In short, you need to delete objects that are not needed for migration. If you don't need a map as such, i.e. mountains, vegetation, and other neutral objects, then feel free to delete them. The more objects there are on the map, the more failures there will be when using the Save Maps methods. And when using Blueprint, unnecessary objects and floor coverings can end up in the generated bluprint.

Remove the extra colonists that you do not plan to transfer. So I will have 22 of the 47 living colonists transferred.

Remove the extra animals, you can enjoy how your colonists release your farm into nature. I was going to carry only each animal in pairs, which is about 120 out of 450. 

Remove the corpses of the colonists that lie in sarcophagi, graves, and refrigerators if you are not going to migrate them. Open the sarcophagi and remove the corpses, as in most cases Save Maps cannot transfer them correctly and incurable bugs result.

Using Save Maps, we will make a backup copy of the entire map in order to transfer it to the new build at once. This is necessary so that if we suddenly forgot to save something in the previous steps, we can get it from the backup already on the new build, without having to switch to the old build. We use the Save everything command. But remember that the mummies of the colonists will not be able to be moved in this way, since they are bugged and generally replaced with the mummies of other pawns, and not your colonists. 

It should also be noted that the color of the floor painting will be preserved only for carpets. The painting of the steel or stone floor will not be preserved.

For this step, I recommend using the Save everything w/o colonists function.

It's simple and convenient here. Open the Character Editor and use the function to save the pawn in the slot. The number of available slots is adjusted in the mod settings.

If you have up to 10 animals, it's also simple and convenient. It's more complicated in my case, but in general the method is the same as for pawns. In the Character Editor window, switch the list of Colonists to the list of Colony Animals and save to the free slots. It is important for me that exactly the animals that were in the old colony move to the new colony. If this doesn't matter to you, then you can create animals in a new colony through Debug action - Spawn Pawn.

Why can't animals be transferred via Save Maps? You can transfer them, but there will be two problems, one of which is solvable, and the other is not. The animals transferred to Save Maps will belong to another faction, and you can solve this problem by using Debug action - T: Tame Animal. But also animals as objects transferred by Save Maps get damaged by the processing of vital ticks at the code level, which leads to an endless stream of errors overloading the engine. These errors are not cured by restarting the save or exiting and returning the caravan.

If you don't have a colony plan (Planning Extended) yet, then I recommend at least outlining exterior walls, and then drawing the lines to the edges of the map. And save the plan to import it on a new build. Lines to the edges of the map are needed if you want to accurately position the new base.

Blueprints can be used to draw your entire base, including the floor covering. There are several points to consider. First, remove from the map all the objects and coverings that you do not want to see in your drawing. This includes walls, columns, and coverings that are freely scattered on the map. Everything needs to be deleted. In my case, I also remove the electrical wiring so that it does not disrupt the new map when transferring.

Data on the quality of objects, their artistic description and authorship will not be transferred to the blueprint.

Statues, urns, chemical reactors, televisions, and telescopes will not be moved to the blueprint.

Workbench bills with the configured lists of instructions will not be transferred to the blueprint.

After saving the blueprint for the current world, it must be exported to the global blueprints folder by right-clicking on the blueprint.

With Save Storage, Outfit..., you can save a complexly configured bills of workbench. My workbenches work in 3 shifts and have orders for different groups of colonists. Because of this, the bills become quite cumbersome and it will take some time to repeat them in the new colony. It is much faster and more convenient to save them for future recovery.

Obtaining some rare resources, items, or manufacturing them at the highest quality level may require large investments and even targeted work by the entire colony.

To transfer them, you can create a service pawn and send it to the caravan by collecting legendary items, books and important resources in a backpack. The DEV: Send Instantly button will collect the items and move the pawn from the map. After that, we immediately return the pawn and save it to the Character Editor slot with the specified items in the backpack.

Be careful, you won't be able to store minified statues or any minifiable buildings/objects in your backpack. If this is done, a cyclical error will occur when restoring the pawn, which can ruin the map and save.

In my case, I don't need to transfer resources, since my next map will be in an ordinary biome where everything is there. But if I were going to the glacier map, I would take a supply of wood with me.

You cannot save mummies as separate objects in the Character Editor slots. You cannot move the mummies in the pawn's backpack, they will be damaged when loaded into the slot. All that remains is to revive them, save them in slots, load them on a new map from the slots, kill them and return them all to the sarcophagi. In this case, most of the social connections will be lost or changed.

Transferring the bodies of dead colonists using Save Maps is not possible for approximately the same reasons as animals. Portable objects will not be able to be adequately processed by the engine and will cause cyclical errors. In addition, sarcophagi and graves containing corpses are also likely to be damaged when transferred via Save Maps and spoil the save of the map.

In total, we have saved

- backup of the entire map.

- the base plan.

- blueprint of the base.

- workbench bills.

- colonists.

- animals.

- items.

We selec a scenario and a planet for a new playthrough. Then we select a starting tile for the colony. We start on it, immediately pause it and save it to "Zero Save". You can always boot into it to repeat the actions if something goes wrong further.

This step is our reinsurance so that we don't have to load the old build again. If you need to restore something from the old colony, you can do it from this map on the new build. Keep in mind that it is important for Save Maps that the new map is the same size as the old one.

It is necessary to clear everything from the map except the starting colonist. This is done using the Clear area (rect) function. The cleared map is also saved in a separate save so that you don't have to repeat the clearing if you need to do everything again. Clearing is also necessary so that when loading objects from the old colony onto a new map, there is no overlap of object identifiers, which leads to damage to the map and save.

On the cleared map, the Save Maps - Load blueprint function is executed. And the entire colony from the previous build appears on the map. We immediately perform a separate save. You won't be able to play on this map, since it will be buggy and resaving won't help restore its functionality. And in general, if you saved all parts of the map separately as indicated above, then you won't need Save Maps.

We load the base plan via Planning Extended. The advantage over Save Maps is that it can be positioned with an offset for subsequent placement of the blueprint.

Option 1 is to immediately proceed to the full placement of the base on the selected game map, if this suits you. Just load the "Zero Save", import the blueprint (Blueprints) and place it as you like. For example, I want to move the entire base 2 cells higher - and this can be done easily. Done? Save in a separate save.

Option 2 is a preliminary accounting of points of interest and subtraction of overlapping areas of the base. For example, my base is large, on the new map there are points of interest - such as caves, ancient dangers, exo-striders, Anima-tree, etc. And focusing on the base plan, I see that restoring the entire base from Blueprints can damage those points of interest, which I do not want. To avoid this, I make a separate save, in which I place the base on the cleared map and make a new base blueprint subtracting the areas overlapping the points of interest. After creation, the new blueprint needs to be exported. And now I transfer this blueprint and make a separate save of this stage.

It's time to get things out of the caravan's backpack. Load the service pawn from the Character Editor, unload everything from the backpack (Drop All Inventory), and delete the pawn. Let me remind you that you won't be able to move any minified objects this way, as this will cause an incurable error. But you can recreate your telescopes, TVs, and chemical reactors through the developer panel.

We unload our team from the Character Editor slots. There is a nuance: if you previously enable the numerical indication of priorities (Manual priorities) on the Work panel, then when unloading the pawns will receive their priorities as they were when saving. (It would be great if their schedule was also saved).

Then we can get animals from the Character Editor. Well, if it is not important, then you can create them through Debug: Spawn Pawn.

Click on each workbench and load the previously saved bill (Save Storage, Outfit.../Load Bills).

This is roughly how I transferred my colony from build 1.5, on which the first season of the expedition was filmed, to the build on version 1.6, on which I will film the second season. Of course, before I got to this algorithm, I tried many options and took various methods to cure errors that spoil the map and save.

В большинстве случаев нам достаточно завершить жизнь колонии на достигнутом этапе и начать заново, попутно пересобрав новую сборку. Но конкретно в моей задумке, пройти с этой же колонией несколько ДЛЦ, поочерёдно включая их в сборку. И благодаря игровому сообществу и мододелам это возможно сделать. Пишите свои заметки по гайду и с какими трудностями сталкивались вы при переносе колоний и как вам удавалось их решить. 

In most cases, it is enough for us to end the life of the colony at the stage reached and start over, simultaneously reassembling a new build. But specifically in my idea, to go through several DLCs with the same colony, including them in the build one by one. And thanks to the gaming community and modders, this can be done. Write your notes on the guide and what difficulties you encountered when transferring colonies and how you managed to solve them.

Good luck to You, your colonies and colonists.