I thought I had things under control...

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1st of Winter: Wind & Rice

As I start the winter, my initial goal is clear: I'm running low on food so I need a Hydroponics Farm, and since hydroponics & sunlamps take a lot of power, I need a Wind Farm as well.

I start out by tweaking my work priorities, clothing, and drug assignments:

This is one of my least favorite parts of RimWorld: optimizing your colonists' clothing and drug usage requires a lot of micromanagement. For instance, melee combatants can use personal shields, but ranged combatants can't, which requires 2 separate outfit parameters. Tattered armor still provides protection but reduces colonists' mood, so I've doubled the number of outfits to command colonists to wear it when there's a threat. Not only that, but Jackets provide more protection against gunfire, but don't protect against the cold as well as Parkas, so I've doubled the number of outfits again so I can command my colonists to wear jackets in the warmer seasons. It works, but it's clunky and I wish it didn't involve so much micromanagement.

With my food supplies running low, I respond to an alert a pack of alphabeavers have invaded my region with rejoicing. I had reached the point of RimWorld where you are happy about threats because it means more food. I send out a hunting party and slaughter a dozen of them, which provides plenty of meat and beaver hides for more parkas.

By Day 3, I have half of my Hydroponics farm up & running and growing rice:

Now that I have 2 entrances, one to my main base and one to my wind farm, raids have gotten... rather confused about where to strike, either splitting up and half taking each side, or them running back & forth between the two.

With all these raids, and me stripping and keeping all the clothing and weapons they drop, I am rapidly running out of storage space. Nearly all of my space is crammed to the gills due to my packratting.

However, I'm handling all these raids and food shortages just fine, so this should be an easy winter to-

Oh.

Oh no.

6th of Winter: Burn It All

The equivalent of 3 tanks is assaulting my colony. Two are equipped with inferno cannons, the other is equipped with a minigun. All 3 have a longer range than my pulse rifles (my best weapons), and they are tough to kill.

I draft all my colonists and pray for minimal casualties.

Things start out bad. The inferno cannon shots burn up the power line from my Wind Farm to my colony, and 2 of my top gunners get caught in the fire. Val burns to death as the flames consume her. I manage to take out the 2 inferno cannoneers, but over half of my gunners are downed or injured, fires are raging through my Wind Farm, and the minigunner is attacking my other entrance.

Just then, two groups of friendlies arrive to help take them out, including one of my colonist's wife. They break out inferno cannons and frag grenades and make mincemeat of the last mechapede, thankfully without any of them dying.

I spend the next day or two treating my wounded, stamping out fires, and desperately trying to harvest my hydroponics rice before it dies from lack of power. I supplement my less-than-expected harvest by slaughter a herd of elk.

10th of Winter: Tilting at Windmills

A few days later, once I've rebuilt my Wind Farm, one of the power lines near them explodes. Several turbines are destroyed in the fires that follow. While I'm stamping those out, I get a distress call on the radio:

Ugh, of all the possible times... I would ignore it if she wasn't Yukiko's sister. I offer safety and try to prep the colonists not beating out fires for combat.

Dammit, the pirates chasing her have a Triple Rocket Launcher. It's a one-use weapon with punch; if he fires it off, it's almost guaranteed one of my colonists will die.

Fortunately, he wanders into my snipers' line of fire and they take him down before he can shoot it off. Unfortunately, the others head straight for my Wind Farm. Sammy goes down fending them off, and while she's writhing in the ground in pain she's hit by several other bullets in the crossfire. Luckily I don't lose any colonists to this assault, but my Wind Farm is in ruins.

I shoot a glare at Yukiko's sister as I haul Sammy to our improvised medbay for treatment.

Wow, I hadn't realized how much she got shot. This is my first colonist that nearly died to blood loss. Fortunately I patch her up, and after nearly losing all her blood and recovering from a stomach/arm infection, she's (finally) back at full health, except for her shot-off ring finger.

Fortunately, I have enough spare steel & components to rebuild my Wind Farm, but I'm sick of them constantly being caught in the crossfire. I queue up building a wall around them to properly fortify my Wind Farm.

While building it, the Chemically-Fascinated Yukiko decides to try some Flake the raiders chasing her sister dropped... and immediately gets addicted to it. When there's only 3 doses left. She continues binging on it.

I really dislike Yukiko and her sister right now.

I rebuild my Wind Farm without incident, aside from an attack by psychically-enraged squirrels, and resow my Hydroponic Rice farm. I might actually have a harvest without incident!

And then the solar flare hits, killing off that harvest.

Conclusion

Regardless, I managed to survive the winter, have a reasonable supply of food, and have nearly completed my Wind Farm Wall with only one death for the whole year.

As for what I have planned for the next year, once I stabilize my food supply, carve some more rooms out of the mountain, and buff up my security, I can focus on researching ship construction and stockpiling enough steel & plasteel to construct an escape ship... assuming my colony doesn't get wiped out by mechanoids. (Those 3 mechapedes got close to wiping me out completely.)

I don't know if I'll continue doing a post-per-season, just summarize the most important things that happened (the first year is the most exciting time for a colony), or just end this feature here. Regardless, I think I'll take at least a week's hiatus from it; I overdosed on this colony between playing through an entire year in less than a week and making posts on each season, and I need to recharge my batteries with something a bit more casual...

Like an Intense Random colony set in a flat Tundra with an average annual temp of 10F and almost no wood/steel to build with. Joy.

At least I haven't had to cannibalize anyone yet.