Your Cheapest Ideas

[blub01]

killable children adds a large public relations and labelling issue to the game.

Skyrim children are invincible because they didn't want to deal with heightened ESRB rating and public outrage.

I can't see Tynan wanting to jump through that hurdle, especially considering children would be largely useless - whether or not you have your colonists stay on the world they crashed on, the IDEA is that they're working towards building a ship to escape.  How many of your colonies have lasted even 3 years (which would be when the kid could theoretically start helping with maybe cleaning or hauling 5 units at a time)?  6 years (they might be able to grow, mine or craft)?  10 years (they could probably do everything by now...but 10 years?)?

so children would be of questionable value to the game, AND they cross a line for many PLAYERS, which would reduce sales, cause public blowback, and likely give the game an even more restrictive ESRB rating.

Remember, Tynan wants his game to cater to as wide an audience as possible...some things, if added, REDUCE the target audience.  I think this wold be one of them

conclusion: it's good as a mod, but shoudn't be in the base game. anyway, this idea is most certainly the opposite of cheap, and should simply get a suggestion thread.

[hwfanatic]

I would love to see guest rooms because im tired of guests sleeping all over my base

Keep a couple of unowned beds. As far as I can tell, the guests use them.

[Pickle]

Add an alarm and the possibility to distinguish the combatants and non-combatants colonists or animals, the firefighter, the medic, etc.

When someone turn on the alarm, colonists and animals will go to specify area, change outfits, or prioritise certain job depending on their category. Different sort of alarm can be created for raid, fire, solar flares...

[Limdood]

got a great cheap idea:

Add the breeding age to each animal's information tab. 

Like:
Breeding age: 2-10 years old

That would be really good information to have readily on hand to decide when to slaughter, whether or not to tame (or train release for mechanoid fodder) or even whether or not to buy/sell the animal.

The forums are regularly hit with "why won't my animals breed" threads and could be solved with the addition of a simple line of text on each of the animal's information tabs.

[Limdood]

This one might fit in this thread:

Make HEALTHY (completely healthy - no cataracts, scars, infections, or current, not-yet-healed wounds-at-time-of-removal) legs, arms, and eyes that are cut out as part of a NON-FAILED operation be items that can be put into someone else.

Catastrophic surgery failures that remove an arm?  that arm is a goner...you probably cut it up too bad.

Installed a peg leg on the wrong leg?  you still have the leg!  You can put it back!

Gave a bionic eye to your best shooter?  cool!  now you can put that healthy eye into your 70-year-old with cataracts that you'd never otherwise consider spending money on bionics for.

As a last, balance issue - removing healthy parts to put an inferior part on should give the "harvested organs" mood penalty.  Or everyone will be releasing double peg leg pirates and saving their legs.  Removed items due to bionics should not give the penalty.

Items removed thru surgery that are not 100% healthy (as mentioned above) should just disappear, as they do now.  That way there is NO status-tracking for removed limbs/organs.

[Muffintrain]

Let colonists ask for basic resources _{(i.e., wood, crops, meats, leathers, steel, silver, etc.)} from other factions in exchange for a certain amount of goodwill. These can really help in crises, especially starvation.

* The way you receive the items could either be from orbital trade drops or cargo pods _{(your pick, Ty)}.

* The amount of resources given to you would depend on the item's value, all under a fixed budget _{(maybe 50-100 silver's worth of stuff? idk.)}.

* They give only one kind of resource at random per request.

* Factions have a slightly bigger chance to send resources most accessible to them _{(leathers for tribes, wood and steel for outlanders, etc.)}.

[Limdood]

Let colonists ask for basic resources _{(i.e., wood, crops, meats, leathers, steel, silver, etc.)} from other factions in exchange for a certain amount of goodwill. These can really help in crises, especially starvation.

* The way you receive the items could either be from orbital trade drops or cargo pods _{(your pick, Ty)}.

* The amount of resources given to you would depend on the item's value, all under a fixed budget _{(maybe 50-100 silver's worth of stuff? idk.)}.

* They give only one kind of resource at random per request.

* Factions have a slightly bigger chance to send resources most accessible to them _{(leathers for tribes, wood and steel for outlanders, etc.)}.

I don't think this is a "cheap" idea according to the thread, but i like it.  I think you should be able to request specific goods though, limited to "meat, vegetables, wood, steel, cloth, skins."  Outlander towns could orbital drop a smaller amount of goods onto a trade beacon, tribesmen could just haul it in.

[eCatYouTube]

Could you add in the dev mode a like "Super fast" mode. So like one in game day is like 30 real life seconds. I think it would be fun to make a almost perfect colony turn on super fast mode and see what causes there down fall, im i the only one who would like this?

[Regret]

Could you add in the dev mode a like "Super fast" mode. So like one in game day is like 30 real life seconds. I think it would be fun to make a almost perfect colony turn on super fast mode and see what causes there down fall, im i the only one who would like this?

Seconded, if only for mad-science experimentors like us. (also, could be useful for debugging.)

[Solar System Colonist]

Dunno if it counts as "feature", but it's cheap on devtime: I'd love to see some reorganization of the bottom bar. Moving the menus "Orders" and "Zone/Area" from the "Architect" button to their own buttons would mean less clicks to get stuff done. OTOH the buttons "Factions", "World", "Statistics" and "Wealth" give rarely used info - those could be dumped in menus instead.

[Muffintrain]

Could you add in the dev mode a like "Super fast" mode. So like one in game day is like 30 real life seconds. I think it would be fun to make a almost perfect colony turn on super fast mode and see what causes there down fall, im i the only one who would like this?

Although I have some doubt regarding the amount of strain this would take on processors, I +1 this nonetheless.

I don't think this is a "cheap" idea according to the thread, but i like it.  I think you should be able to request specific goods though, limited to "meat, vegetables, wood, steel, cloth, skins."  Outlander towns could orbital drop a smaller amount of goods onto a trade beacon, tribesmen could just haul it in.

Well, it could be like any simple cargo pod drop event except you can manually trigger it with the comm console.

[hwfanatic]

Make it so indoor trade beacons change their area of effect according to the room they are in as long as it is not larger than the original area.

And another one:
Make it so armor does not count towards "wearing worn out apparel" as long as you cannot produce a new armor piece in the game.

[FyrnSkulblaka]

Something I've been thinking about recently is something called a raid alarm. A building that, when a raid or sappers event is triggered (Not siege) the block emits an in-game sound, You know the sort. And colonists will then be drafted automatically. I was thinking of having 2 settings, One for armed colonists (Any colonist with a weapon). And one for all colonists to get drafted. It would have to be powered, I was thinking something like 200 WD whilst on standby and 400 WD When there is a raid. The alarm would then be reset when the enemy retreat (Or all die). The colonists however would have to be manually undrafted. The drafting wouldn't include prisoners injured in bed.

Thanks in advance for reading this

[milon]

I don't think this has been suggested yet, but how about better user feedback on why something is forbidden when it's outside the allowed zone?  ie. "Cannot bury muffalo corpse (forbidden - outside of allowed zone)"

Not really a keen eye, this comes up every week, that people do not understand that the zones are NOT a restriction on movement, but on what work can be performed.

[HypoHelmet]

How's this for cheap: add 'yellow' to Colors.txt in the namebanks folder? I was wondering if this was deliberate, like if Tynan really doesn't like yellow, but considering that it's a major component of the Ludeon logo, and features heavily in the theme for the forum, this seems unlikely.

(firstposthello)