tldr - Randomness after saves ruins my experience. Suggestion for random crafting table.
I still remember the day that my little crafter on day 1, built our colony a Mastercraft table for our dining room! I had no other joy activities in the place! For months that table was the high point of all my colonists day! It made the place look brighter. My colonists really enjoyed sitting down to have their meals at it. And when it came time for those little pink squares, it was the first place they bolted to every night. I had to make extra chairs quickly as all of my colonists were kinda fighting on who got dibs at night until I had a place for all of them to sit.
Ah..those were the days. I loved that table!
But now...sadly...
It's all legendary!
You see, I have the ability to save the game right before I complete building something that has a quality rating. By reloading over and over again, I am able to eventually craft every piece I build into "Legendary" quality. Seems great at first, but robs the game of it's immersion as I no longer need to accomplish things like to harvest wood, as everything is just peachy already
By making the check for quality happen much sooner than item creation, so that the item (created by the same crafter) always came out the same quality, would rob be of my attempt to circumvent the system and return some randomness to the way quality works.
I know, I could just NOT do it. But I CAN. So I DO ;P (over and over again) It's like, if it's there and I find it, it's fair game!
Had to give up playing most RPG's and many other games that allow randomness after a save, as I would use that game's randomness against it.
The only way I can see around this that can't be easily circumvented is to have a table of all craftables, and to add a randomness to the next 100 or so builds of each item.
Of course there is still crafting skill involved, so it has to keep it's value.
In my head, It would look something like this. (beds as an example)
Normal crafting skill no longer randomized (it's just an example;P)
Awful 1-3
Shoddy 4-6
poor 7-9
normal 10
good 11-13
Superior 14-16
Excellent 16-18
Mastercraft 19
Legendary 20
Game is created.
Game creates random crafting table.
first 5 slots of bed table says
1)+7 skill
2)-3 skill
3)0 skill
4)-2 skill
5)+10 skill
The first bed gets made by a colonist with 10 construction skill.
Construction skill would normally net you a bed of "normal quality" but since line one says +7, the colonists builds an "excellent" bed instead
The second bed was by a colonist with 20 skill. With a -3 as the secondary line, The result will also be an "excellent" bed.
A zero in the random crafting table would indicate no randomness to the build.
No matter how many times I would save and reload, the same action by the same colonist would always end up as the same result. The action itself would still have a random factor to it, but one that was predetermined. The crafter would still never build the same bed twice in a row.
Some would say, "Well people will still just wait for the table to be populated and then edit it."
And those people will. Thankfully that's too far in depth for myself and many others to go do, so will probably dissuade us from doing so.
I wont proclaim to know anything about coding, as I have no skill. I would assume something like this may be hard to implement this far into development, and understand if I get laughed off the stage
That being said, I love this game and just want to see it turn out absolutely wonderful!
Thanks Tynan, Great work!
I still remember the day that my little crafter on day 1, built our colony a Mastercraft table for our dining room! I had no other joy activities in the place! For months that table was the high point of all my colonists day! It made the place look brighter. My colonists really enjoyed sitting down to have their meals at it. And when it came time for those little pink squares, it was the first place they bolted to every night. I had to make extra chairs quickly as all of my colonists were kinda fighting on who got dibs at night until I had a place for all of them to sit.
Ah..those were the days. I loved that table!
But now...sadly...
It's all legendary!
You see, I have the ability to save the game right before I complete building something that has a quality rating. By reloading over and over again, I am able to eventually craft every piece I build into "Legendary" quality. Seems great at first, but robs the game of it's immersion as I no longer need to accomplish things like to harvest wood, as everything is just peachy already
By making the check for quality happen much sooner than item creation, so that the item (created by the same crafter) always came out the same quality, would rob be of my attempt to circumvent the system and return some randomness to the way quality works.
I know, I could just NOT do it. But I CAN. So I DO ;P (over and over again) It's like, if it's there and I find it, it's fair game!
Had to give up playing most RPG's and many other games that allow randomness after a save, as I would use that game's randomness against it.
The only way I can see around this that can't be easily circumvented is to have a table of all craftables, and to add a randomness to the next 100 or so builds of each item.
Of course there is still crafting skill involved, so it has to keep it's value.
In my head, It would look something like this. (beds as an example)
Normal crafting skill no longer randomized (it's just an example;P)
Awful 1-3
Shoddy 4-6
poor 7-9
normal 10
good 11-13
Superior 14-16
Excellent 16-18
Mastercraft 19
Legendary 20
Game is created.
Game creates random crafting table.
first 5 slots of bed table says
1)+7 skill
2)-3 skill
3)0 skill
4)-2 skill
5)+10 skill
The first bed gets made by a colonist with 10 construction skill.
Construction skill would normally net you a bed of "normal quality" but since line one says +7, the colonists builds an "excellent" bed instead
The second bed was by a colonist with 20 skill. With a -3 as the secondary line, The result will also be an "excellent" bed.
A zero in the random crafting table would indicate no randomness to the build.
No matter how many times I would save and reload, the same action by the same colonist would always end up as the same result. The action itself would still have a random factor to it, but one that was predetermined. The crafter would still never build the same bed twice in a row.
Some would say, "Well people will still just wait for the table to be populated and then edit it."
And those people will. Thankfully that's too far in depth for myself and many others to go do, so will probably dissuade us from doing so.
I wont proclaim to know anything about coding, as I have no skill. I would assume something like this may be hard to implement this far into development, and understand if I get laughed off the stage
That being said, I love this game and just want to see it turn out absolutely wonderful!
Thanks Tynan, Great work!