Ludeon Forums

RimWorld => General Discussion => Topic started by: Tynan on March 09, 2014, 10:20:30 PM

Title: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Tynan on March 09, 2014, 10:20:30 PM
So the game has increased in complexity over the last few alphas, first with the addition of stockpiles, and now with work tables and the associated bill system.

I'm seeing more reports of people getting blocked by AI/behavior/usability issues. Things like:

-Why aren't they cooking? (the ingredients are too far away, outside the bill's ingredient search radius, or, no cook with enough skill, or you ordered a fine meal but only have one kind of ingredient)
-Why aren't they cutting stone? (bill expired)
-Why aren't they hauling the bodies? (the bodies are far away; they're busy hauling other stuff because they haul in order of distance)

Basically, it seems there are a lot of silent failure points. It worries me. I don't want people to hit these kinds of silent failures.

My question is:

Tell me stories about times you got stuck by some usability/clarity/AI priority condition that you didn't understand and caused you distress.

To be clear, I'm not really asking for suggestions about how to fix things. You can offer these if you wish, but they'll be of secondary importance to the problem story itself.

Thanks greatly to anyone who is willing to share their experiences of the game breaking on them! If I collect a good number of these stories, I hope I'll be able to synthesize a redesign that elegantly fixes the problems. I really want to add content to the game, but I also want to make sure the core stays nice and smooth. And unfortunately, I think it's been regressing on the smoothness measure since the pre-alpha due to increasing complexity.

In order to keep this thread clean, posts that don't focus on a usability story are liable to be deleted. Sorry, but I don't want this to devolve into a general suggestions thread.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: SlimeCrusher on March 09, 2014, 10:39:58 PM
Heh, i remember when i first started playing Alpha 2, i was cutting stone and i noticed "... Why isn't he grabbing that layer of stone on my stockpile?...", after some minutes i noticed "Oh... The range isn't enough!", then i also remember (on the same save), i was trying the no-roof section, and i mined some stuff for it, and i thought it only didn't worked on thick roof, and i supposed because it was all thin roof, my colonists would, as the description says, go and "tear down existing roofs", then i noticed it didn't worked like that, and i ended up having a horrible hole in the middle of a mountain  ;D
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Jet Jaguar on March 09, 2014, 10:46:43 PM
A couple of things come to mind.

In one of my early games in the last alpha, the colonists were going mental because among other things, they kept eating raw potatoes and it was upsetting. I think I was completely confused as to the relationship between nutrient paste dispensers and the hopper--how close/far should they be. And after the inevitable mental break that killed everyone, I still didn't know how to fix it.

Figuring out room size and how it relates to comfort is a bit of hidden knowledge--I now know that it's 6x6 but that seems like quite a bit. It could be that the only current furniture for a room is a bed, perhaps this will be less of an issue if there are more creature comforts.

Dealing with ships is confusing as well. "I have all of this silver stored in a cave, why can't I buy anything?" Oh, because it has to be on a launch pad. Likewise, I wish I had a dollar for every time I tried to use the communicator to no response because I couldn't remember that there wasn't anybody in orbit.

I also stretch people to the breaking point by having them rescue a colonist in combat and then stand vigil over their bed, still in recruited mode, since it's easy to be distracted by managing the fight and dealing with the aftermath. Meanwhile, the poor colonist is standing in a room at attention until I get multiple warnings that they have a mental break. Could they return to what they were doing before the rescue?
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: LZPanzer on March 09, 2014, 10:50:00 PM
my biggest problem is the cooking system. i think its causing my colonies to starve to death. first off i have no problem creating at least a basic meal. My problem is that i either cook to few, (my colonists get mad and rampage), or i cook too many, (half the meals expire and i run out of food stock to make more meals then they rampage). ive even tried manipulating a nearby stock pile toto try to regulate the amount of food stock that goes onto the cooking table. that doesnt help. in short its frustrating to have a massive farm and nothing to eat half the time.

it wouuld be very useful to be able to store the meals for a longer time or limit the rate(not just amount) that thye are produced
ive noticed a similar over production with the stone blocks but they dot expire and can be used at a later date
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Tynan on March 09, 2014, 11:07:04 PM
Great stuff! Keep it coming, please.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Jet Jaguar on March 10, 2014, 02:56:43 AM
In terms of information needs:

Some way to toggle the kinds of roofs that are over structures would be nice. I often find myself thinking "Is this a heavy roof? A light one? Will it cover this room or solar panel?" You can mouse over a square to see it one-by-one, but a quick show and hide might be helpful. (And as a side note, I have an aesthetic interest in that as well.)

I also find myself sorting through colonists in an attempt to figure out who would be good at something or bad at it. You don't want to put the Mining 1 guy on rock detail or try to assign hauling to the person who is really bad at it. (Also, ManualDumb is probably hauling, but is it? Internal names are used in the colonist screen and a different set of names on the priorities screen) I think it's been mentioned elsewhere, but some sort of display/sorting would be keen.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Thaldon on March 10, 2014, 04:42:15 AM
Providing Food seems to require huge micromanagement. Constantly adding Bills. Ensuring the cook is available when food is needed.  Providing raw materials for cooking. 
With the nutrient paste dispenser.  I just needed to make sure I had enough potato fields and enough people to work them.
Now I am constantly either manually stopping cooking( by turning off the stove, closing the bill, Locking the available food so it can't be moved) Or overproducing meals (they start taking up several Rooms and expiring.)
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: zurtri on March 10, 2014, 06:18:30 AM
Hi Tynan,

The game is very very good and much loved. Here are some things I have found quirky.


Thanks Ty, never have I seen a post like this from a Dev -  well done mate - most appreciated.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Yurg on March 10, 2014, 06:34:55 AM
One incident that I remember is when I was first setting up a cooking station. I wanted the small food stockpile next to it to always have food so I set the priority to critical.
I then had a situation where no colonists were loading the hoppers in my prison nutrient dispenser. Took me a while to realize the priority on this is only 'important' by default and colonists were actually taking food from the hopper to my food stockpile.

It's fine now I know this but it wasn't immediately apparent.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Serrate Bloodrage on March 10, 2014, 06:52:49 AM
The cooking thing is my biggest bug bear.
Quote from: dabbertorres on March 10, 2014, 01:48:15 AM
Yep, biggest thing for me is the cooking. It's cool, but it's a bit too much micro-management for my taste (currently). Something like a refrigerator would be very nice.
On that note, I found myself thinking it'd be nice if we could make bills, such as: "Make 10 meals per day". I feel like that would be a good balance of requiring management from the player, but not too much.

I believe it was said somewhere that you can set colonists to "auto-hunt" in the future, so no issue there from me.

Other than those things, I'm pretty well satisfied!

This ^ would be a great fix.
As it is, and correct me if Im wrong, but I have to single click my way from 1-22 meals to feed my colonists (I have 22 Colonists) and I have to do this every single meal time (Do they only eat once a day? I just cook more meals when I see people going for raw stuff). I think I may have sprained my clicking finger so I started a smaller colony and keep it at 4 people so I don't have to order so many meals.

The only other thing is friendly fire. A rabid boomrat is melee fighting one of my pawns and another pawn standing behind him picking strawberries randomly decides to fire a burst into his back then goes back to picking strawberries. Would love to have the option to get my pawns to avoid obvious blue on blue situations.
Oh yeah! Shooting a crazed muffalo and another pawn runs into the line of fire to clean up the blood hahaha. Obviously a bit different to the random fire I previously mentioned but no less annoying. Why can't my colonists just love eachother instead of constantly trying to fire as many rounds into eachother as possible!
Question- Does it intentionally rain to put out fires? A massive bushfire burning it's way into my base with the colonists having to skip sleep and food or let the fires rage through their home would be a pretty amazing event.

I am so in love with this game, so thanks. Seriously, it's bloody awesome. You feeling the love? Cos I'm sending it to you <3
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Pirx Danford on March 10, 2014, 07:33:08 AM
I stopped using cooking in my colony, because on one hand the bill creation is a hassle and on the other hand I either have too many or too less meals.
Also the pawns grab the nearest food, so a lot of plates spoil if I make too many.

I would much rather like to see something like a "cantina" where a cook would take orders from the colonists themselves...
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Vithren on March 10, 2014, 08:24:54 AM
1. There were times I quickly dismissed some information, only to *not* be able to find it later: any kind of log would be useful.
2. Having picked something to build in Architect and then wanting to build something else - thing picked before is always under the cursor. It's distracting. Maybe "turn off whatever cursor is hauling when over the architect menu"?
3. No real idea how the comfort system is working. I can guess that 5x3 rooms are enough? With proper furniture? Which floor is better? Some kind of length measurement while mining or making zones would be useful.
4. The deconstruct/cancel buttons should have keyboard shortcuts, as I'm using it quite a bit.
5. Amount of times I wanted to prioritize some action... reuse the code already in place for the importance of zones?
6. No quick way to jump between colonist, AFAIK? So I end up searching for them all over the place, just to see "ooh, ok, you only have shooting at *three*... now, if only I could remember how the other colonist had it... lower? no? ._."
7. Just yesterday my colonist was stuck in some simply "haul metal one place, return it to the original one" loop. It seems something (cactus) was in the way of hauling it to the stockpile - and I didn't understand why the hell was it not working. Attention/warning system?
8. Why must I deconstruction the beds even when colonist already have better ones made especially for them? I'VE MADE YOU BEDS AND ROOMS WITH FURNITURE, GOD DAMN IT. USE IT.
9. Why are some fires just spreading? How can I stop them? Why *can't* I stop them? Some water reservoirs would be nice.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Luckless on March 10, 2014, 09:33:34 AM
Food has been an issue for me as well.

Besides just managing when and how much I make I've had the issue of even when I had a fair number of meals ready then pawns would still path to enjoy the tasty tasty paste, which they would promptly complain about.

However simply saying "Always eat meals first" might not be the best solution in larger bases that might have multiple meal stations. (Maybe multiple 'home zones' so you can configure sub-communities that will use their own resources first before checking others.)

The other problem I've been having is the lack of visibility on things like the stone cutting bench. Having a clear ring on how far they will go to grab stuff might be nice, as would maybe being able to select a dumping area as their 'go-to' point to grab stuff first. (That way you can queue up haulers to drag stuff from far away to keep the crafter rolling.)
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: dazhat on March 10, 2014, 09:45:07 AM
I start using stone blocks for wallls early on then switch to metal. They stop building stone blocks after a while. I assume this is because after a while all the close by stone has been used up and they do not haul the stone which is far away.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Vithren on March 10, 2014, 10:12:10 AM
Quote
- Ingredients are gathered only from stockpiles/dump if present. If not, it shows as missing ingredient on the top-right corner warning.

Which reminds me that there's no notification system for tasks that are done or can't be.

Quote
The other problem I've been having is the lack of visibility on things like the stone cutting bench. Having a clear ring on how far they will go to grab stuff might be nice, as would maybe being able to select a dumping area as their 'go-to' point to grab stuff first.

Very much this.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: ShadowTani on March 10, 2014, 10:34:22 AM
Well, most of my issues have been mostly annoyances than usability issues... But I do remember I couldn't figure out how to stop fires when I played my first few games because I didn't realize it was related to home zones. I dunno if the new tutor will point that out now though whenever you have your first fire pop up (I turned it off now that I'm experienced with the game), but thought I'd mention it.

Though, while on the subject, firefighting is still an annoyance for me. The reason is that sometimes I want to put out fires in places I don't want to have a home zone in, such as a boomrat exploding outside the home area and me wanting to save its tasty morsel from burning up. The only solution seem to be to home zone and then removing the zone afterwards, which is a slight annoyance. An alternative way to put out fire manually in such situations would be nice - I believe that could also help those who can't figure out home zoning yet.

Also, there's that you can't manually declare things that are in a prison room for hauling, took me forever to figure that out, lol. Had a dead prisoner body laying there forever without anyone picking it up and me not being able to right click to get someone to do it. xD I figured it out first when I relocated the prison (I had a temporary setup inside the stonecrafting room - and yeah, the stoneblocks produced couldn't be manually set for hauling either, on the automatic side they did not haul them to the stockpile either, but I think they might have grabbed them directly when they needed them though - I can't remember for sure). However, I guess this is more of a bug than an usability issue.

Either way, these things are the closest I've been to usability issues myself as far as I can remember. With the exception that I'm experiencing the same thing with the food as everyone else, but I know that has already been fixed for A3 based on the development log. :3

Quote from: zurtri on March 10, 2014, 06:18:30 AM

  • The whole 'range' concept for crafting is a PITA. May I suggest removing it entirely and have it like all other activities - start at the closest and go from there.

Problem is that some of us actually don't want the colonists to go too far outside the camp due to the risk of them derping themselves to death by wanting to get that stone next to a group of raiders that just landed. I prefer to have a stone stockpile next to the crafting station and manually set stone debris for hauling.

Scanning the whole map for stones as opposed to a smaller area is also a bigger hit to the performance; not that it's a problem for me, but I'm sure that could matter for some.

But I agree with those that wants to have a more visual indication of the area that are being covered by the bill. Maybe also have a visual icon pop up over a bench when the last check for stuff to haul to it failed to find anything - along with a tip from the game tutor about increasing the range (for those that got that turned on).
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Blitz on March 10, 2014, 12:26:21 PM
Cross posting my comments here from the reddit thread.

To me, I think the biggest issue with new players and new patches is that there is no real tutorial. I know your (Ty) new videos help that, but you had 15,000 views on the video with 25,000 copies of the game sold - we are still not getting information to 10,000 people. I get comments on my videos/IRC/Forums all the time asking me how to do things or saying they enjoyed my description of how I get things to work. The adaptive tutor is fine, but it serves more as an annoyance in telling me the obvious rather than actually having a brief walkthrough level to learn the basics. Honestly - Itchyflea did a better job of describing what happens in his custom scenarios than the vanilla game does all by using the popup messages. I'd say to expand his exploding ship custom game and make that a intro/tutorial. Learn how to turn skills on and off, how to build walls, and understand power/food.

My biggest usability complaint right now is that haulers will always take to the closest stockpile square when the task first gets queued instead of the closest by walking distance - this means they will walk through a huge maze to get to a spot that is 10 blocks away (they may walk over 100 blocks to get there) instead of going 11 blocks in direct line of site.

My second hangup is firefighting is still broken. It gets frustrating when a raider can ignite the middle square of a solar pannel but a colonist can not put the fire out.

I feel like the stone crafting system is over complicated. The billing system feels pointless. A rock cutting table cuts rocks - why should I need to tell the table that it needs to cut rocks? Just have someone with crafting enabled, they will know what to do as long as they have materials. This is where linked stockpiles in Dwarf Fortress is awesome. Also, why do we not have a slag refinery to break the slag into rock and metal?

I enjoy the new cooking concept, but I do not really like the implementaion. I feel like Nutrient Paste Dispensors were the lifeblood of the colony - now they are pointless because meals are created other ways. If your NPD died, you were screwed. Can we just make hoppers (refridgeration units) accept the foods and the NPDs make the meals? Get rid of cooking skill all together. If the NPD has 3 hoppers - create a lavish meal, 2 hoppers - fine meal, 1 hopper - mashed taters. If there is human meat in a hopper, then the eater will hate the created meal. Right now it feels like there is an additional unneeded step that over complicates.

My biggest issue with the defense system is the need to recruit everyone to defend or make them stop working. Watching Derpy McRepairer walk out through a line of raiders to repair a conduit is frustrating. If we had a squad and alert system, we could draft our military to defend an area while the civilains continued on their task in the base.

I also think housing should be overhauled. 5x6 rooms are way too large for comfortable living. Currently dorms are more efficient for space and walking distance than making individual rooms, but the penalty can be an issue. To me, a 3x3 room should be effective. It gives room for a bed, a plant and a light, that should be enough.

Now let's get to the things I really am enjoying. I love the new rock walls, and that they do not burn. I feel that this adds a good balance to the game. I like the new stockpiling and growing areas. The gun system is good and feels balanced. Blasting charges were OP, glad they are now an optional mod. The modding system is great, easy to use, and enjoyable.

Keep up the great work Ty, thanks for looking for feedback.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Tynan on March 10, 2014, 02:03:02 PM
Thanks everyone.

I deleted a few comments that were just unbacked suggestions, but in general, we've done well to stay on the topic, which is specific stories of broken usability that you have experienced.

The less you interpret your story and transmute it into a suggestion or generalized annoyance, the better. Pure stories are best.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Ozog on March 10, 2014, 02:21:33 PM
Because I often tunnel deep into mountains, I sometimes lose track of all of my pawns.  This is only an issue when the "Raiders are'a comin'" signal is triggered. 

Speaking of that signal, does anyone else think the font color should be something different, compared to all the other text?  (Like the envelopes.)
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Benny the Icepick on March 10, 2014, 02:29:25 PM
I have to echo everyone that cooking is both incredibly welcome and the feature most in need of tweaking.  I agree with Blitzkriegsler that it has essentially superseded the importance of the Nutrient Paste Dispenser (especially at 1/4 the size).  It adds another layer of complexity to the game in that it requires greater care with selecting the stats of your initial colonists and requires that you manage yet another task for them to perform.  If the billing system is sufficiently improved I don't see any reason that the NPD shouldn't simply go away in the next version.

One of my struggles early on was understanding the dynamics between happiness, fear, and loyalty.  I just figured happiness and loyalty were desirable, and fear was not; it never occurred to me (even with the position and size of the bars) that happiness and fear both contributed to loyalty.  It might be clearer if the happiness bar were one color, the fear were another, and the loyalty bar was the two stacked together, so you could see visually that each contributed to loyalty and by how much.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Blitz on March 10, 2014, 02:58:35 PM
Quote from: Benny the Icepick on March 10, 2014, 02:29:25 PM
One of my struggles early on was understanding the dynamics between happiness, fear, and loyalty.  I just figured happiness and loyalty were desirable, and fear was not; it never occurred to me (even with the position and size of the bars) that happiness and fear both contributed to loyalty.  It might be clearer if the happiness bar were one color, the fear were another, and the loyalty bar was the two stacked together, so you could see visually that each contributed to loyalty and by how much.

Loyalty is the highest of either fear or happiness, not a combination. I agree with this too. It is very hard to track overall loyalty of the colony (although easier in the recent versions). This gets back to old debates though.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: autohost on March 10, 2014, 04:29:28 PM
I've had several instances of a colonist catching fire, I try to prioritize putting out the fire on him by clicking on several nearby colonists (right next to him) only to see the gray message that that job is being done by some other colonist who happens to be many spaces away.

Vaz yawned again as he set down the latest simple meal he had just made.  He'd been doing a lot of that lately--making meals and yawning.  It seemed strange to him that most other items seemed to stack together nicely in one space, but meals had to be laid out, one per square meter.  The other colonists didn't seem to mind picking their way carefully through the meal stockpile that lay between the stove and the dining table, but Vaz couldn't help but wince as some ran through at top speed on some important errand. 

"Munch, munch" came from the direction of the meal stockpile, and Vaz face-palmed.  Another animal had wandered into the colony and was making itself at home on their food.  He had shot several already that day, but was just too tired to handle it this time.  He hoped it was only a squirrel and not, God forbid, one of the boomrats!  The memory of what happened when the first boomrat he'd ever seen died still made him shudder. 

"I hope Lisa kills it this time," he said to himself as he trudged over a few spaces to get more ingredients.  The previous day, Shawn had been given the job of killing several annoying varmints in the colony.  As he started shooting, every colonist even remotely in the line of fire dove for cover under workbenches or behind walls as the shots hit almost everything except the target animal.  Vaz had had to repair his own stove after that incident and was glad he'd found a safe place behind a stone wall.  He remembered having targets to shoot at when he was a kid and wondered if the Navy scientist who had joined the colony couldn't figure out some way to make one so Shawn, and a few others, could improve their shooting skill safely.

A thought suddenly occurred to Vaz as he fixed the next meal, and he burst out laughing.  He wondered with whom he could share the thought, but seriously doubted any other colonist would find it funny.  The scientist might find it interesting, something to research perhaps, but not funny.  The thought was this: No matter the ingredients used in fixing any meal, if the meal was not eaten in exactly 4.0 days, it would go bad.  Vaz guessed it was something unique to the planet they had crashed on.  He was glad that meals with meat and berries lasted 4 days:  they certainly would not on any other planet he knew of, with the hot sun and rain that regularly assaulted the colony.  Vaz wistfully recalled the refrigeration units back home which could keep food fresh or even frozen for long periods of time.  He recalled a simple device used by tribesmen thousands of years ago, using just two large unglazed clay pots, one fit inside the other, sand between them, and water to soak the sand.  Food could be kept quite cool in the inner clay pot, with a cloth placed over the top of the jar.  He wondered what the scientist would think of the idea and snorted.  He probably wouldn't believe that anything without power and coolant would work.  Oh well, back to the grind, ours is not to question why...  He felt vaguely uneasy as his mind remembered how that quote ended, but people had to eat, so he fixed another meal before heading off to bed.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Monkfish on March 10, 2014, 06:58:12 PM
Useability
- It would be nice to be able to select multiple items to interact/control them. For example, during my last session I built a lot of graves (about 6 in one go) and then had to set the priority of them all manually. Being able to shift-click to select multiple objects, or have an option to select all/select all on screen, would make life so much easier. Another use of this would be selecting all lights/doors/turrets to power them down during eclipses to conserve power for more important things.
[/list]

AI Priority

Clarity
Often I find myself setting a construction job, going off to do something else and then returning to the job to find it hasn't been started. Specific jobs that are blocked for whatever reason are not highlighted to the player, either through the notifications in the upper right or by visual indication on the blueprint itself. I think the inclusion of a red cross or exclamation mark on a blocked job as well as an "n jobs blocked" notification would be very handy.
I am unsure exactly how the priority of hauled items works and could make several assumptions based on what I've observed, but my best guess would be that items are hauled based on proximity to the stockpile, with stockpiles worked on based on their priority. To put this into some context, last night, after a four strong Raider attack, there were a few bodies laying about the place that needed moving to some graves I had already constructed. I allowed interaction with the bodies and guns and also set the grave priority to Critical to ensure they were moved promptly as they were in close proximity to my growing areas and I didn't want my gardeners getting all upset about seeing some dead people. After a short while, the bodies were still there, the gardeners weren't that impressed and the haulers were... moving stones and potatoes.

As I said, I have no idea how the hauling priorities work, but here's how I think it should work; The stockpiles retain the priority system so that the player can control where the items go first, whereas the items get an interface similar to the stockpile controls but where the priority of individual items (and maybe even the radius around the stockpile they're going to) can be adjusted to control which items arrive first and from where. Items with the same priorities should be moved in equal volume. This would probably require a check on the last item dropped into the stockpile and compare its priority to that of other items the stockpile still has space for, then assigning out a job based on what items are due next that isn't the last one. With this method, it should be possible to both properly prioritise items and control where they're coming from. This is handy because a Colonist going for a wander into the wilderness to collect some metal when they should probably bury that body they've just fallen over leads to undesirable situations, mostly featuring Colonists upset and dead. This could have numerous possibilities and allow for a proper and granular control of resources and their locations.
- I build a launchpad, delivery beacon and comm station last night, figuring the 500+ potatoes I had was probably excessive and someone might exchange them for some guns. I'm not really sure what triggered it, but at some point my haulers started taking stuff from my stockpile (which is tucked away inside) to the launchpad (which is outside of the base). I... don't even. I clicked on the launchpad and it told me it was a launchpad. I clicked on the delivery beacon and it told me it was a cactus, but I told it to stop being silly. I then clicked on the comms station and it also told me nothing. I have no idea why my haulers were moving stuff to the launch pad but I'm guessing it was something to do with a trade ship being in the area as they seemed to move it all back inside when it left. Not a clue what happened there and there was no obvious indication of what was going on.
[/list]

/walloftext

EDIT: New items marked *
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: dd0029 on March 10, 2014, 07:17:37 PM
Quote from: Monkfish on March 10, 2014, 06:58:12 PM
  • Launchpad - What the shit?
- I build a launchpad, delivery beacon and comm station last night, figuring the 500+ potatoes I had was probably excessive and someone might exchange them for some guns. I'm not really sure what triggered it, but at some point my haulers started taking stuff from my stockpile (which is tucked away inside) to the launchpad (which is outside of the base). I... don't even. I clicked on the launchpad and it told me it was a launchpad. I clicked on the delivery beacon and it told me it was a cactus, but I told it to stop being silly. I then clicked on the comms station and it also told me nothing. I have no idea why my haulers were moving stuff to the launch pad but I'm guessing it was something to do with a trade ship being in the area as they seemed to move it all back inside when it left. Not a clue what happened there and there was no obvious indication of what was going on.
[/list]

/walloftext

Launchpads actually have an automagic storage zone under them set to priority I believe. So if you in house storage was set to normal, things would get moved to the launch pad as that has a higher priority. Click twice on the launch pad to select the storage zone under it.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Alandil on March 10, 2014, 08:05:59 PM
- Building a wall in a tight spot or in a 1 tile wide corridor usually requires to command each block of wall one after another, since otherwise closer wall blocks will be build first, blocking the way to the unbuild walls and often even trapping colonists inside.

- Trying to replace a dirt wall with a metal wall in the beginning often caused my buildings to collapse, as you have to wait until the wall is mined, before it is possible to give the command to build a metal wall in its place.

- My biggest issue with the new cooking system was that the meals got hauled to launchpads, blocking those and of course no option to sell them (I would not expect that; the colony is not a restaurant.) and the missing prioritization of high quality food.

I worked around the missing prioritization by putting a cooking table for lavish meals closest to the living area, a fine meal cooking table behind that, then a simple meal cooking table and a nutrient paste dispenser at the end of the line to make sure high quality food would be consumed first. I also deactivated meals-storing on all storage areas, which leads to floor-storage of meals around the cooking tables(When the room is full, the meals magically get dropped through walls outsite of the facility). Thats efficient enough to play with, but pretty bad for immersion.

Maybe storage areas will not have meals-storing activated by default, instead tables could become storing areas for food, enhancing social chat and avoiding that colonists eat at a butchering table or so alone instead at the nice eating table.


- I usually build 4 launchpads as close as possible to a drop beacon to make sure the wares (especially silver) I receive land right on the launchpad or at least in close hauling distance.

- Saving burning colonists used to make me panic, for example trying to make the whole area around them a home zone to make sure someone will treat the fire. Now I just let them burn, knowing they usually fend off the flames themselves before dying.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Monkfish on March 10, 2014, 08:19:07 PM
Quote from: dd0029 on March 10, 2014, 07:17:37 PMLaunchpads actually have an automagic storage zone under them set to priority I believe. So if you in house storage was set to normal, things would get moved to the launch pad as that has a higher priority. Click twice on the launch pad to select the storage zone under it.
Aha! I see. That's... not particularly intuitive. The launchpad should just have a built in stockpile, although I assume this is temporary anyway.

Quote from: Alandil on March 10, 2014, 08:05:59 PM
- Building a wall in a tight spot or in a 1 tile wide corridor usually requires to command each block of wall one after another, since otherwise closer wall blocks will be build first, blocking the way to the unbuild walls and often even trapping colonists inside.

- Trying to replace a dirt wall with a metal wall in the beginning often caused my buildings to collapse, as you have to wait until the wall is mined, before it is possible to give the command to build a metal wall in its place.
How did I forget about posting these?! The corner/line building thing is a pain, it would be nice if the jobs were prioritised in order of accessibility although I have no idea how that might be implemented technically, unless the individual wall sections are just queued in the order the line is dragged, so to build into a corner or a single square width corridor, one would drag from the blocked and towards the open end.

For the second point, I haven't had the same issues with roofs collapsing, but it would be nice to be able to stack jobs on single squares. So, for example, if I wanted to replace a metal wall with a stone one, I'd deconstruct the first and then order the second, which would only be queued once the deconstruction has happened. It would be really nice if the Colonist were to bring the materials needed for the construction job with them, rather than walking to the deconstruction job, completing it and then walking back to a stockpile for the resource before walking back to the construction job. ;)

Either that or the placement of an item to be constructed automatically issues mining/deconstruction jobs on anything that's in the way, with those specific mining jobs having a higher priority than regular mining jobs (i.e. ones set using Orders).
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: dd0029 on March 10, 2014, 08:55:54 PM
Quote from: ShadowTani on March 10, 2014, 10:34:22 AM
Also, there's that you can't manually declare things that are in a prison room for hauling, took me forever to figure that out, lol. Had a dead prisoner body laying there forever without anyone picking it up and me not being able to right click to get someone to do it. xD I figured it out first when I relocated the prison (I had a temporary setup inside the stonecrafting room - and yeah, the stoneblocks produced couldn't be manually set for hauling either, on the automatic side they did not haul them to the stockpile either, but I think they might have grabbed them directly when they needed them though - I can't remember for sure). However, I guess this is more of a bug than an usability issue.

I had something similar happen during a game this morning. I was just started and was digging out my base. The only "building" I had was my growing building. So, I decided to just throw two beds in there as prison beds until I could get the actual prison dug out.

I was slack in building my paste dispenser and didn't get it up until after my first prisoner. After the first raider wave, I noticed that people were still eating raw food. So I checked that there wasn't a flare or that the dispenser wasn't unpowered. The hoppers were attached. I was puzzled. So I tried to manually set someone to haul. The right click menu wouldn't show up. I thought something was off as I'd just un recruited my people after the attack. So I let them go start a task and tried again. Still no dice. The right click on an item should come up with some sort of message even when nothing can happen.

Another example is my table in the empty prison room phenomena. (http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=2452.0) Why don't they do the same thing at the non prison table with the flowers? Why only the prison gathering?
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: RadGH on March 10, 2014, 10:53:28 PM
I've been a pretty avid dwarf fortress / city builder / RTS type of gamer, so I've probably had a lot less trouble than most people have when starting out in this game.

However, I still did have trouble on a few things. Most of these have probably been covered or are already known, but I'm going to go through them in full anyway.

1) Graves should not bury animals by default.

2) Maximum range of workstations should start much higher, if not maxed. From Dwarf Fortress, I understand the benefit of limiting search range for performance reasons, but it only makes sense when you are a well-established town.

3) I didn't figure out how to interact with travellers/passersby until my third game. Would be nice to have a right-click option when in citizen mode that is grayed out that says "Arrest BillyBob (Required Military)". It would also be nice to have some diplomacy options and avoid arresting them; or even trade/chat with these people, but I know that is a lot more implementation than just a quick usability fix.

4) There's a bit of a problem with roofs when building in caves (again, dwarf style). I have un-removable regions that cannot be cleared by the no-roof zone (or even by adding roofs again, then removing). It would be nice to have an order to "Remove Roof".

See the solar panels on the left, and the empty room on the top right:
http://radleygh.com/images/RimWorld363Win_2014-069-19-56-16-48.png

It seems to work fine until you have part of the roof collapse. From there, I can't find any workaround to get rid of them. The roof tiles that aren't being removed are "Rock Roof (Thin)"

5) Some of the descriptions for furniture/buildings are not very helpful.

Example A: The grave - What does burying people actually do outside of roleplay?I assume it gives a happy thought for burying people, or at least gets rid of the negative thought of seeing a corpse. That should be explained in the description

Example B: The sandbags - It's great that they provide cover, but how does that work? From Reddit it appears you can shoot over them if you are adjacent. I am not sure if there is any accuracy falloff over distance, or if they even stop grenades.

Example C: Flowers - It's hard to find out what they are for. I've got roses. I can't figure out what to do with them. I can't find any tooltip that explains them. Maybe they just aren't finished yet. I noticed the flower pots grow daylily on their own, so that's not what they are for.

6) I still do not understand what a nutrient paste generator is for. Nobody seems to be able to use it. My people seem to be quite content with a kitchen and even eating raw food, as long as they have a prepared meal once in awhile.

7) The hoppers and equipment benches do not seem to have any benefit. Maybe they do, or maybe they are just cosmetic mini-stockpiles. If they do anything aside from providing a mini-stockpile, they should explain it (I'd imagine the hopper lets you stack more items on one tile, but it doesn't seem to be the case).

eight) Does slag debris do anything? I would assume this can (or in the future will be able to) melt down into metal, and the tooltip should explain that.

9) The launch pad needs a different name, like "Cargo Area", "Landing Zone", or "Loading Zone". It's quite misleading, I didn't bother reading the description for awhile since I had no plans on building rockets until I had a flourishing base. Then I realized what it was really for, and was just like, "what?". I assume that's what the double quotes are for, though.

10) If you give someone an order to dig an area, they immediately lose interest when they are done and go to do something else. It would be nice to give them a "Mine Minerals in the area" command, which could either requeue the job until they are bored/hungry/angry, or they finish the area.

---

I would like to point out that most of the other features in the game were very well done. I didn't expect the turrets to be so simple to set up, and I love that I can directly control people to do specific tasks. I was incredibly surprised at how well this has already turned out.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Jet Jaguar on March 11, 2014, 12:58:11 AM
One of my colonies didn't quite understand how Fear technology worked or what it would be used for, so they build a dozen gibbets at the entrance to their fort. "Anyone attacking us will be terrified by our grim entrance and run away," they thought. Only instead, they all freaked out every time they went in and out of the camp and any attackers saw it but were nonplussed.

Another colony couldn't tell whether or not their damaged geothermal unit was producing any power, so they blew it up and demolished the power line leading to the base. They eventually built a second one at a different location.

Yet a third colony discovered the hard way that mining can only produce rooms of a certain size before the roof collapses. Many Bothans died to bring us this information.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Ethalias on March 11, 2014, 04:56:17 AM
Quote from: RadGH on March 10, 2014, 10:53:28 PM
6) I still do not understand what a nutrient paste generator is for. Nobody seems to be able to use it. My people seem to be quite content with a kitchen and even eating raw food, as long as they have a prepared meal once in awhile.

7) The hoppers and equipment benches do not seem to have any benefit. Maybe they do, or maybe they are just cosmetic mini-stockpiles. If they do anything aside from providing a mini-stockpile, they should explain it (I'd imagine the hopper lets you stack more items on one tile, but it doesn't seem to be the case).


If you place hoppers adjacent to the nutrient paste dispenser, colonists can retrieve nutrient paste meals from it. This issue has caused a fair amount of confusion in the past, so greater clarity may be in order.  :)
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Ethalias on March 11, 2014, 05:11:48 AM
To echo/flag a few things:


Loving the game even as it is! Totally hooked...
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: SlimeCrusher on March 11, 2014, 01:34:34 PM
Weren't we supposed to post stories and not like "This thing needs to be changed, also it would be nice to add"-type stuff? Anyways, another one!
This happened some days ago, i was playing and i also captured a traveller, but when i went to check on him, i noticed the colonist staying drafted, i quickly said "NOONONONO" and when i clicked on him, instantaneosly he decided to leave the colony and i had to arrest him, that was fun!... Kind of  :P
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Ender on March 11, 2014, 07:56:25 PM
I must re-say what a fair amount of other people are saying, i have stopped using cooking in most of my colonies as it is WAY to much of a hassel everything from where to store food for quick access while it not looking terrible (though this isnt a BIG issue) to simply not being able to tell the cook "only make "X" amount of food". it has gotten to the point that i have pretty much stopped using the mechanic as much as i hate to and now just use nutrient paste dispensers.
^^^
There is my two cents on the issue that comes up in my colonies the most.
btw as always great work Tynan
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Pirx Danford on March 12, 2014, 04:28:03 AM
I don't know if I am lucky with my current colony in Alpha 2 or if this has been removed from the game, but in Alpha 1 this happened:
It was a day like any other day, well except that yet another group of raiders was eagerly preparing their attack.
Defending had become a routine and everyone was ready and expecting the assault.
When the attack started there were some raiders wielding molotovs and grenades spotted and I decided to order these to be shot first.
And just then, when trying to have - I believe her name was Kees - shoot at a molotov wielder I noticed the option to shoot was disabled for her.
Only then I realised that the trait unable of aggression (or some such) in fact meant that she could really not fight at all.
In the heat of battle I never before realized that she never shot her weapon at all.

Its not such a huge problem, but that was a situation that silently sneaked up on me.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Serrate Bloodrage on March 12, 2014, 04:54:43 AM
That is awesome Pirx..maybe she was really good at faking it? :)
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Monkfish on March 12, 2014, 05:48:38 AM
I had that in my last (Alpha 2) colony so it's still in the game, I guess you've just been lucky with your colonists so far. Incidentally, that last colony ended up mostly on fire after a shit run of luck with bandits and lightning, with a single non-violent colonist left desperately trying to put out the flames.  :o ;D

I do love that every play is totally different. That colony didn't last very long at all whereas my current one is 7 strong (having grown to 8 and then dipping back to 5) over 70+ days and has more resources than I know what to do with. Raider parties are now 5 strong with most of them wielding M14/16 or M24s so I don't anticipate it staying like that for long.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Ekornserk on March 12, 2014, 02:34:34 PM
Usability problem:
An angry boomrat once cased a small fire in my base (inside home zone). But the colonists in the area did nothing. The fire grew and started to spread. Nobody put out anything. Finally, a colonist arrived to fight the fire. But - get this - he puts out a single tile of fire and returns to other work. WTF?!?!? The fire is spreading rapidly...


What really happened:
I had a somewhat large base and as fire spread each new tile of fire got "reserved" by a different colonists. Most were far away, and travel time allowed the fire to spread before the firefighter arrived. I had to turn off firefighting on many colonists and micromanage to get the fire under control.


Expected behavior:
Colonist right next to something needing to be done should just do it. Colonists need to think more about travel time.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Monkfish on March 12, 2014, 03:42:19 PM
Protip: If a colonist is in the middle of a task (which may be time consuming and/or a distance away) that's lower priority than what they should be doing, enlist them and then un-enlist them. This seems to reset their tasks as they will then start work on the highest priority task when un-enlisted. The two main advantages are that you can do this anywhere on the map and don't have to scroll to the location of the fire, and when you're there you don't have to find a tile that isn't already reserved by someone else.

From a usability point of view, I would expect certain high priority jobs (let's call them critical jobs) to interrupt any in-progress job regardless of its progress, so if, for example, a colonist is hauling some slag to a stockpile some distance away and a fire broke out they, would immediately drop what they're doing and tackle the fire (assuming that they were the closest or there are more tiles on fire than there are colonists to put them out). I suppose the only job that's really critical is firefighting, but I guess being able to set other critical jobs (using the overview) would be handy. Another use for this would be allow rapid recovery from a blight as you could set the growing task as critical and all of your growers would drop what they're doing and sow some plants, even if what they're doing is a higher priority than growing (like construction).
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: DarkMyau on March 12, 2014, 10:09:20 PM
With Alpha 2. The emphasis has changed from preparing a good defence to growing enough food.

The growing areas seem to be useless. But they pretty much were in Alpha 1 so that not an issue. Hydroponic tables seem to grow potato's a lot slower and I am having a bit of trouble creating a surplus for trading. 

In my current game on Randy Random (I have 48 colonists btw) I decided to create a growing area to plant strawberry plants so that I could sell more potatoes. Bizarrely I started running low on food. This is despite having 10 people on growing! I cancelled the growing area and created another section for hydroponics and that stopped the rot, but I am not getting a surplus.

A trick I picked up is to watch the Oafs growing and stop them taking the first thing they grow to eat. Make them put in in a hopper instead and then they eat half of the potato instead of the whole thing.

Raids seem to have slowed to a trickle. Its rare that I even get attacks anymore and they never come in very large numbers? I was expecting 50 - 60 raiders. I am getting 10-20 of them.

However when a raid finally comes, a second raid group appears..and a third( and one time a forth!). While waiting for the second group to hit, several of my colonists have had a mental break and run straight into the raiders. Even during the firefight, this has happened.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: keylocke on March 13, 2014, 12:36:03 AM
Quote from: Torgaddon on March 12, 2014, 10:09:20 PM
A trick I picked up is to watch the Oafs growing and stop them taking the first thing they grow to eat. Make them put in in a hopper instead and then they eat half of the potato instead of the whole thing.

-same thing happens to me. pawns keep eating raw food despite having the NPD-hoppers or a cooking stove right in front of them.

-another thing i noticed is that, when electrical devices attach their power plugs to the wall, they don't seem to distinguish walls disconnected from the power grid, so i usually have to destroy that wall first, and sometimes i have to destroy the device as well, and then recreate it so that it would attach itself to the correct wall. but i think that happened in alpha 1, so i'm not sure if the same thing applies to current build.

-also, in the architect menu, it does not display the estimated amount of energy that will be used by an electrical device (it just displays the price). so i usually find out the hard way after things starts shutting down due to lack of power.

Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: TMS on March 13, 2014, 03:23:32 AM
Hi there... old player returning for Alpha 2!  Not much of a forum-dweller, so apologies if any of this is redundant.

One main request above all others... I should be able to bulk-change the storage options on launchpads (or, rather, the storage beneath them... which I imagine will be even trickier) when I have multiple of them selected.  More than anything, that's what's bugging me at the moment - having to manually set every launchpad to not accept meat and do accept weapons.  Similar problem with graves accepting animal corpses.  I agree that a partial solution would involve defaulting graves to not permit animals, and would be a welcome tweak.

The food system is, as others have suggested, a little demanding.  I read in another thread that you intend to build in a "target storage amount" (to prevent endless production of meals).  This makes some sense.  However, assuming that my colony has access to meat occasionally, I will end up running two targets - one for simple meals and one for complex menus - potentially producing a surplus.  I'd want to keep both targets running in case the meat runs out, but I don't want surplus and the spoiling of food it brings with it.  So... would it be possible to set a target to produce, say, 10 surplus meals to the highest standard I demand (simple, fine or lavish)?  Essentially, you'd be rolling the targets into one, but it will intelligently change according to what ingredients are available?

Silver begins to take an extraordinary amount of storage space.  If you want to keep that silver available for trade, then you're looking at 4 launchpads per 7500 silver.  I'd like to see the stacking limit on silver increased to make it more manageable.  Currency shouldn't be that bulky in a game like this!

I would also agree that adding a visual indicator to the Communication Unit to indicate somebody's in range would be incredibly useful.  Don't add the indicator to the UI, add it to the sprite/in-game image if possible.  Like others have suggested, something similar could be done for the crafting stations.  Also, might help people if when setting the range on crafting station, the range was overlaid on the map (kinda like how the turrets show their max range).

I've also noticed that I get a lot of screen-stutter when a large number of my colonists are idle.  I'm assuming that's because it's generating random paths for them constantly???  Would also help if colonists assumed a pre-set path in a user-defined 'recreation zone' to prevent them from wandering off.

Oh, and...

(http://i62.tinypic.com/2hhi35t.png)
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Snownova on March 13, 2014, 05:22:28 AM
One thing I've run into in Alpha 2 is that whenever there are no meals or nutrient paste available, people will grab raw food, which is fine. But I'd really like the ability to tell them not to grab the precious scraps of meats that I scrounged together so they could enjoy fine meals, but instead they should gorge themselves on potatoes.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Ekornserk on March 13, 2014, 05:43:49 AM
We're getting off Topic!

Tynan have repeatedly stated that he wants specific stories of broken usability.

Not suggestions, not workarounds, not fixes. Let's all try to write shorter posts. Less is more!
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Jotun on March 14, 2014, 10:27:10 AM
I find that colonists are a bit bad at prioritising things.

Specifically they seem quite reluctant to do things to maintain their own mental health, and the current priorities system is a bit borked when it comes to essential and constant tasks like food growing.

Colonists will regularly expose themselves to lots of things they hate, even when it's perfectly practical for them to sit in the nice ornamental garden I built them until they feel better. But instead they insist on going outside near the corpse-pile from the last invasion in order to drag bodies around, then straight to digging in a filthy dark hole for four hours until they're near-starving.

It'd be nice if colonists would display a little aversion to unpleasant things unless I tell them specifically that I want them to do it, or unless they're happy and motivated and so won't suffer much from the hardship. If colonists are unhappy then it'd be nice if they would go do happy things for a little bit to cheer themselves up.

Growing food also is a bit iffy, because the colonists will regularly run backwards and forwards between two fields to harvest and plant alternatingly as space becomes available, depending on which task is higher on their priorities list. It'd be nice if they would just pick a field and work it steadily, then move onto another one, so they spend less time running between plots and more time working. Also if they'd wait for a field to become fully grown (or mostly fully grown) before harvesting it, unless I specify otherwise, rather than immediately running halfway across the map to harvest a potato because that one happens to be grown, then running all the way back to replant another space in a different field.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: colonistPally on March 15, 2014, 12:46:24 AM
I apologize for not responding to this back when you made the post. This has been a BAD f-ing week.

My #1 has got to be needing to haul or repair, and it not being selected. It drives me up a wall.

I'm glad they'll have well described reasons, but I really want there to be an option right from the context menu to *HAUL ANYWAY!!!* One for like "haul x1" or "haul forever." Then I can go change it back later when whatever emergency is over.

I can think of more, but that's still my #1.

My #2 is "WHY WON'T THEY BURY THE BODY!!!" Are they not a hauler? Is there not a graveyard?! I can usually figure out the rest of the things in the game, like why aren't they building or why aren't they cooking chopping whatever. But why aren't they hauling drives me insane.

#3 is "WHY WON'T THEY BUILD A STONE FLOOR HERE!!!!!" I still haven't figured that one out. It drives me nuts.

#4+ is stuff my brother's brought up. Making stone walls confused the hell out of him for a while, and so did cooking. I've also read that selling stuff with the traders has confused a lot of people. I don't feel like making a million tiny training videos so I always just answer them as 1-offs. Having context would help. Like an ingame helper computer.

You go "help food" and it goes "help food cook, or help food paste dispenser" and you go help food paste dispenser and it shows you a diagram of how many spaces to leave and where to put hoppers and that it needs power and that it needs to be indoors. and then you build it, and it goes "good job" and closes out.

then you go like "help table" and it shows like "help small table help long table" and you choose and it does the same thing. And you can do that with all of them and it has the AI to know when you're done. It can even overlay like ask you "where do you want it?" and you click and it goes okay build this here, and you do it, and you just follow the step by step instructions.

It won't build it FOR YOU but it'll walk you through. Like you click X for where you want it and it goes "warning needs to be indoors" and you can go like "help indoors" and it goes "what do you want it for? food?" and you go yes and it asks where you want it and it goes you need like 15x15 for food dispenser and table and chairs and hoppers or something.

Man it's hard to type all this out my fingers are hurting. I hope this makes sense. Like mini paperclip tutorials that microsoft used to have.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: UrbanBourbon on March 15, 2014, 06:39:00 AM
Quote from: colonistPally on March 15, 2014, 12:46:24 AM
My #1 has got to be needing to haul or repair, and it not being selected. It drives me up a wall.

I'm glad they'll have well described reasons, but I really want there to be an option right from the context menu to *HAUL ANYWAY!!!* One for like "haul x1" or "haul forever." Then I can go change it back later when whatever emergency is over.

I can think of more, but that's still my #1.
But... There is the right-click option. You select a hauler colonist, right-click on a haulable (unforbidden) item and it should pop up an option "Prioritize hauling metal", for example, if it's a pile of metal. As for repairing, it helps if you have 1-2 colonists who have the repair job set to higher priority. Have you noticed the big red X in the Overview list, that reads "Manual priorities" next to it? If not, you should click that.

Quote from: colonistPally on March 15, 2014, 12:46:24 AM
My #2 is "WHY WON'T THEY BURY THE BODY!!!" Are they not a hauler? Is there not a graveyard?! I can usually figure out the rest of the things in the game, like why aren't they building or why aren't they cooking chopping whatever. But why aren't they hauling drives me insane.
This relates to the hauling task and farming. Farming creates a lot of hauling task spam, and colonists are always happy to accept the closest task they can do. Dead bodies usually reside far away from your farming plots. Personally I would put hauling dead human bodies to the top of the hauling tasks, and make the task ignore the distance. It should be noted that storyteller AI is also a factor here - Phoebians don't see many raider bodies, while Cleopatrians have to deal with throngs of bodies.

Quote from: colonistPally on March 15, 2014, 12:46:24 AM
#3 is "WHY WON'T THEY BUILD A STONE FLOOR HERE!!!!!" I still haven't figured that one out. It drives me nuts.
You need to build the stonecutter's table, place a stockpile of stone rubble (not slag) near it, and assign a colonist to craft stone blocks. Stone blocks are used for stone floors.

Quote from: colonistPally on March 15, 2014, 12:46:24 AM
#4+ is stuff my brother's brought up. Making stone walls...
Just pause the game, Alt-Tab out of the game and read up the wiki. Leave the browser open when you return to the game.
http://rimworldwiki.com/Stonecutter%27s_table
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Monkfish on March 15, 2014, 07:00:53 AM
Also, smooth stone floor (requires no resources) can only be made if the floor is rock. If it is soil/sand/not rock then it won't be made. Took me a while to figure that one out!
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: UrbanBourbon on March 15, 2014, 07:12:52 AM
Speaking of the "Manual Priorities" option in the Overview window, I think that's the number one problem - people are not clicking it. That option flies under the radar, hiding in plain sight. I've watched a ton of gameplay videos of RimWorld and I'd say less than a third of the video creators have that option enabled. When looking back, it took me a while to click it as well.

I'm someone who has been tempered in the fires of Dwarf Fortress. Nothing phases me anymore. No game is too difficult to master. I just don't give a shit. I'm tired to rage about the difficulty or seemingly broken mechanics. I will use a thousand tricks to circumvent the problem rather than ragequit. Ragequitting is still quitting, after all. I will use my full powers of observation to determine the nature of any mechanics that annoy me. If something doesn't work as expected, then that is the enemy and intel is needed about it. I used to feel frustration in games, but then I hit the point when I was too experienced and too tired to get angry. I had seen too much. There was a turning point and I would just study a game in peace. I took my sweet time to understand every last bit. The harder it was to understand something, and the more something pissed me off, the more focused I got, because I had faith that "Whatever this is, it has a function, a purpose, or a story behind it and I intend to find what it is." I used to walk right past anything that I didn't understand in 2 seconds, and that was the goddamn mother of my problems. It was time for mother to die. Uhhh.. did I say that out loud?

EDIT:
Oh my God, I almost forgot! The Item Selection Cycle syndrome! I don't know what else to call it. It took me dozens of gameplay hours to notice that you can cycle through the items residing on the same tile simply by left-clicking on the tile... slowly. Because you don't want to cause a double-click. Would've been handy to know that from the start.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Teovald on March 15, 2014, 01:19:42 PM
-I read the changelog so I knew that there were stone items. I started a new colony but soon I realized that even though I had a stone cutting workbench, nobody was working on these stone tiles. 
I did not know what to do, so I had to watch a youtube video to learn about bills (I either did not see the button, or did not click on the stone cutting bench). 
-After that, another issue was the need to get back to the workbench to order more stone each time my stock got depleted.. The whole process feels very grindy and it is easy to forget to recreate a bill. 
-On the cooking side of things, the bills are weird too. I often forgot to renew it and when I do renew it, it results in piles of plates around the cook.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Monkfish on March 15, 2014, 02:40:08 PM
I set a bill for unlimited stone blocks and keep the radius at the default. I then build a stone-only stockpile next to the cutting bench with a reasonably high priority (but lower than food). Once all stones are removed from the home zone, I can control the pace at which stone blocks are made by setting haul orders on other nearby stones. I typically only have one person set as a crafter too.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Serrate Bloodrage on March 16, 2014, 01:34:15 AM
I do it exactly as Monfish does by the sound of it. Seems to be the easiest way to control it.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Teovald on March 17, 2014, 08:42:51 AM
Now that I think about it, I have don't know how to recruit bypassers. 
Am I supposed to arrest them ? or is there any negociation option ?
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Serrate Bloodrage on March 17, 2014, 08:45:14 AM
At this point you arrest them
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Monkfish on March 17, 2014, 09:06:25 AM
Yep, you arrest them providing you have a spare prisoner bed free. If you don't, the quickest thing to do is to turn a colonist bed into a prison bed (assuming everyone has their own room) and build a new bed elsewhere whilst the prisoner is being collected. This allows you to immediately capture someone and you can worry about allocating new beds out once they've been captured.

I hope (and somewhat assume) that Tynan will be working on friendly recruiting methods too. I'd like to see something like;

- Issue "Invite to colony" command. A Colonist then approaches the person and there's a chance they will convince the person to come and take a look around, which would be based on their social skills. Failing this chance check would result in the person leaving (although they could be arrested with a heavy negative to loyalty) or, on rare occasions, becoming hostile.
- Invitee then becomes a visitor that stays for a day or so (in a spare colonist bed) and wanders about chatting with colonists and scouting the place out. They would access food of their own accord but won't be available to assign jobs to.
- Wardens would approach this person and attempt to recruit them in the same way they do with prisoners (although just setting all of your wardens to recruit would have a negative effect).
- The visitor would join the colony if they wanted to (could happen at any time) and leave if they didn't want to (They could still be arrested though).
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: SlimeCrusher on March 17, 2014, 10:33:47 AM
Quote from: Monkfish on March 17, 2014, 09:06:25 AM
- Wardens would approach this person and attempt to recruit them in the same way they do with prisoners (although just setting all of your wardens to recruit would have a negative effect).
Visitor: Aah, what a beautiful day on the colony!
*A blob of wardens run towards him*
Warden 1/2/3/4/5: JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US JOIN US!!!!!

Now, that would be what will happen if text bubbles get added into the game... lol
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Monkfish on March 17, 2014, 11:47:13 AM
:D

I'd like to see something similar for prisoners too, whereby they are negatively affected if all of your wardens come to pester them about joining. It'd also be cool if some tried to escape.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Benny the Icepick on March 17, 2014, 02:16:38 PM
Ooh, the talk of prisoners reminded me of another issue:
What's the difference between arresting someone and capturing someone?

I managed to nab a fleeing raider and throw them into my prison, but they just spazzed out and melee attacked all the other prisoners until the prisoners killed him.  And of course, being assigned as a prison room, the dead body just kinda chilled there until I managed to recruit the others (which took a while.  Because of the body.  Sense my frustration).

One of the big issues for me is the lack of explanation on the Wiki, which is essentially the closest thing we have to a manual.  I'd like to take the time to update it, but it's probably best to wait until Alpha 3 comes out, as it sounds like Tynan is tinkering with mechanics in a pretty major way.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Cryotech on March 18, 2014, 05:18:12 PM
More of UI quirk, but personally I find it slightly annoying as a perfectionist to make precise measurements. Why not have a little marker on the sides of your 'ghosted' build thing, to show how many blocks you're placing? Even something simple like "5 units" or "5 blocks" would be great- if you wanted to go the extra mile though, maybe even scale it. Something like 1 block being 2 meters or something.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: dd0029 on March 19, 2014, 09:14:04 AM
Quote from: Benny the Icepick on March 17, 2014, 02:16:38 PM
I managed to nab a fleeing raider and throw them into my prison, but they just spazzed out and melee attacked all the other prisoners until the prisoners killed him.  And of course, being assigned as a prison room, the dead body just kinda chilled there until I managed to recruit the others (which took a while.  Because of the body.  Sense my frustration).

For fleeing raiders who turn blue, ie capturable while not incapacitated, I have had the most luck grabbing them after they have been blue for a "while". If you snag them immediately, they seem to go bonkers right off the bat. Letting them wander, hoping that their former buddies don't decide to cap them, has given me about a 25% success rate for a safe capture where as the immediate pickup has been guaranteed crazytown.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: porcupine on March 20, 2014, 04:49:34 AM
Not sure about other items, but when crafting stone blocks, and then dropping them into a stockpile zone, the colonists won't restack piles.

IE: I have a stockpile zone with ~20 tiles occupied.  All tiles are occupied with a random quantity of stone blocks (~2-50 blocks per tile say), and while more blocks are being crafted, they're dumped around the bench (over a dozen stacks, ironically, stacked in piles of 75).

There is plenty more room in this stockpile for more items, but the colonists won't simply shuffle the blocks around to make stacks of 75 for some reason.  They're perfectly content with the stack of 2 stone tiles taking up an entire block, etc.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Tynan on March 20, 2014, 11:56:28 AM
It seems that if no storage squad can accept the entire stack you want to store, it won't be moved. I guess that's a bit of an AI derp.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: ShadowTani on March 20, 2014, 04:59:57 PM
I personally didn't notice this issue. But I do have the issue that they keep stacking multiple stacks in the same stockpile square. So have you multi-clicked the stockpiled items to check if it isn't a 75 stack under the lower-amount stacks?
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: porcupine on March 21, 2014, 02:22:26 AM
Quote from: Tynan on March 20, 2014, 11:56:28 AM
It seems that if no storage squad can accept the entire stack you want to store, it won't be moved. I guess that's a bit of an AI derp.

I've got another one, kinda...

My colony is now suffering what I like to call "The sims syndrome".  It's gotten so large, and the colonists walk so slowly (relative to the passage of time), that now little, if anything can get done in a day.  Getting their two meals, and to/from bed, to a common mess hall near the entrance takes a substantial portion of the day, much like if you ever played the first sims (never played the rest), and made a luxurious mansion, your sims spent all day just in the walking.

It makes me wonder if this is something that *should* be corrected?  Perhaps a multiplier based on map size, and days passed, where all PC's/NPC's move incrementally faster to account for covering more ground?  Perhaps based on the number of colonists in play?  I don't know,  just throwing it out there.

I don't think the other tasks should be impacted, or even how this would balance out (I mean raiders/etc. should be faster too, right?), but it seems a shame that I'm about to cram everybody into a massive shared zero-space dorm by the door, and wall off the rest of my colony just to get some damn grass cut :)

Also, with 50+ colonists, success is their greatest enemy.  The game slows to an absolute crawl if they have many idle hands.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: ShadowTani on March 21, 2014, 09:58:00 PM
^ If you have problems managing a 50+ colony then don't go over 50 colonists... There's a reason the other story tellers are capped just above 10 colonists (12?). Just because Randy Random has no hard limit doesn't mean there won't be a soft limit. Tynan already doubled the performance of the game for A2, before that the colony usually got unplayable from lag at just 30-40 colonists.

I personally don't go above 20 colonists even on Randy, and I had no issues with lag or inefficient work performance - and my colony take up more than half the map; though the actual labor and activity area is admittedly more concentrated.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Tynan on March 22, 2014, 01:30:44 AM
The problems with high population go beyond computer performance. It's also a nightmare to organize so many people. And how many stories have 50 meaningful characters? The game becomes a statistics exercise instead of a story about people when it gets that big.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: UrbanBourbon on March 22, 2014, 02:46:41 PM
And earlier today I was lamenting how managing a colony becomes a bit difficult when one's colony headcount approaches 50.


It's the battles, I think. It's the lack of assigned battle stations and how you have to individually put 30+ colonists to their spots. Also, it's the targeting logic that bothers me during battles - they always fire at the nearest enemy, when I'd want them to pick their own targets, or start with the most dangerous raiders (frag raiders, molotovs, snipers, R-4s... in that order, I think). 'Dangerous', however, is a matter of opinion and situation... but not always. Frag raiders are the worst, hands down. But now, as it stands, it bothers me how they volley their fire against one raider at a time. Also the identical aiming times and firing rates bother me. They're part of the reason for those unison bursts.


And now, as my colony keeps ever growing, I find some of them are not wielding weapons. Either they were badly wounded earlier or they're new converts that I forgot to set up properly. "WHY ARE YOU NOT SHOOTING-- oh... you do not have a weapon"


Speaking of weapons, I'm swimming in them. They litter the battlefield, they litter the stockpiles. I'm out of land. This is sort of a problem even with reasonable populations but now it's just ludicrous. I get tired of blowing up excess guns. I've been converting guns to expensive stuff through wheeling and dealing  but now my room of missiles and medical kits is filling. I just want to get rid of the guns. I don't want any profit from them. I just want to destroy them or convert them to metal, perhaps. Can't I just give them away for free to weapons traders?


Even with a colony of 12, one can wish that he'd be able to select multiple colonists and manually order them to fire at the same target with just few clicks.


On the civilian side, I find myself wanting to relieve some of the 10+ skill laborers from duty so that any aspiring laborers can get a chance to develop in their favorite jobs (passion). The Overview tab doesn't show passions, though, so I'm reduced to meticulously looking through each colonist and consider new tasks for them. I'm such a middle-management dog.


Tynan, I understand you perhaps wish to restrict colony populations to figures such as 8 or 12, but some players will ultimately want to try crowded colonies, even at the risk of fading personality. I can only guess how big a portion that is. If at all possible, you should at least look into facilitating that, to make it a smooth experience rather than being one hindered by the interface, or outright refuse to do so out of artistic principles. The will of the customers is a powerful thing. It's a river, and one can take a stand in it, or even fight his way upstream, or canoe downstream with the flow. In the end, it's the people who decide how they want to play the game. But you already know this, since there's modding support. Freedom is a beautiful thing. On the other hand, so is persistence. All that being said, I don't understand why the population limit on Randy is so damn high. Were we supposed to die way before we reached a population of 30? Did you want us to fail and get annihilated, Tynan? ;D
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Tynan on March 23, 2014, 12:24:43 PM
I can only make one game at a time, and I'm choosing to make one that exemplifies the value of a small-population colony.

For players who always want more, more, and more, I'm considering putting in "sub-human" characters to swell the population. This means worker robots or perhaps ultra-animals. So you'd have a dozen humans directing a larger population of workers. This preserves the character focus on those dozen individuals.

Really properly making a game that supports larger population is, as you're hinting, a very large project and would require restructuring a lot of the design. I'm choosing not to push in that direction at this point. I suppose this could change, but this is the path I've chosen and I'm sticking with it for now.

As for Randy - it was an experiment, really. I put lots of stuff in the game without a good idea of how it'll be received. Randy has demonstrated that there is a big push for larger late-game populations. Perhaps this means I should prioritize up the sub-human characters/robot workers concept.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Gabriel_Braun on March 23, 2014, 01:02:50 PM
Craftable drone workers seems like a brilliant idea and also adds in the opportunity for massive research trees dedicated to their improvement!  I'm quite happy having 6-10 colonists if they can have an extended optronics workforce :D
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: ShadowTani on March 23, 2014, 05:17:08 PM
Quote from: Tynan on March 23, 2014, 12:24:43 PM
As for Randy - it was an experiment, really. I put lots of stuff in the game without a good idea of how it'll be received. Randy has demonstrated that there is a big push for larger late-game populations. Perhaps this means I should prioritize up the sub-human characters/robot workers concept.

I personally started playing Randy due to wanting increased difficulty and reduced predictability rather than the potential increased colony population. I still think the game is a bit too easy and would love to see a bit stricter recruitment rules, such as heavier and lasting loyalty penalties for literally kidnapping people into your colony instead of people you save or buy. ATM there's very little of interest to buy for silver anyway and I find myself selling people instead of buying.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Serrate Bloodrage on March 23, 2014, 06:40:51 PM
I chose to play Randy for the unpredictability for increased difficulty aswell
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: OnyxShadow on March 23, 2014, 09:21:15 PM
Time does seem to pass a bit too fast relative to what you can accomplish in it...but not as much as some players might think. I would guess that most players struggle with this issue because their base is much too spread out. If you condense things and have a layout that is intuitive you'll be a lot more productive even with current settings. However, days taking about 25% more actual time would probably have a better feel. Also, certain events with a heavy impact seem to go on a bit longer than I feel that they should (solar flares, shell shock) relative to game time.

As far as the push for more colonists, I feel like it comes from the pressure to get everything done. With 3 colonists, you struggle to simply get by. With over 10, you can easily start to expand and move on to minor concerns and lower priorities. Also, it seems to me that I need to recruit more and more folks to survive larger and larger raiding parties. Although I realize that the size of the attacks is scaled to my current personnel and defenses, its simply harder to survive an attack of 4 with 3 colonists and 1 turret than it is to survive against 20 raiders with 12 colonists and 8 turrets...particularly without losing someone irreplaceable. What I think I'm getting at is that this scaling should make drawing too much attention with more colonists and defenses a liability rather than a near necessity, and difficulty should increase as the game goes on rather than the inverse. If I'm going to die its always within the first 20 days, and then its smooth sailing.

UrbanBourbon made me think of something cool...a smelter. It doesn't even need to be efficient, but it would solve several issues.

I love the idea of creatures and robots taking care of minor tasks.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Rokiyo on March 24, 2014, 10:23:01 AM
Quote from: Tynan on March 23, 2014, 12:24:43 PM
As for Randy - it was an experiment, really. I put lots of stuff in the game without a good idea of how it'll be received. Randy has demonstrated that there is a big push for larger late-game populations. Perhaps this means I should prioritize up the sub-human characters/robot workers concept.
I suspect the push for larger late-game populations by players is driven by current game mechanics rather than what sort of game they are seeking to play. I.e. It's not that they necessarily WANT more colonists, it's that they may think they NEED more colonists to achieve whatever their goals are (be it keeping up with cleaning & hauling workloads, or being able to defend against extremely large raiding parties).

I think the biggest driver is late-game raiding parties: Turrets are relatively weak, so players really don't have much choice except to maximise their population in order to survive.

If you're wanting this game to be about small-population colonies, then I think the major endgame challenges should come more from interpersonal conflict between colonists than external threats. The Walking Dead is an example of this, where the story is more about how the survivors interact with each other than it is about killing zombies.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Architect on March 24, 2014, 10:59:33 AM
Quote from: Rokiyo on March 24, 2014, 10:23:01 AM
If you're wanting this game to be about small-population colonies, then I think the major endgame challenges should come more from interpersonal conflict between colonists than external threats. The Walking Dead is an example of this, where the story is more about how the survivors interact with each other than it is about killing zombies.

Couldnt have made a better point. 100% agree with this.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: porcupine on March 24, 2014, 11:58:08 AM
Quote from: Rokiyo on March 24, 2014, 10:23:01 AM
I suspect the push for larger late-game populations by players is driven by current game mechanics rather than what sort of game they are seeking to play. I.e. It's not that they necessarily WANT more colonists, it's that they may think they NEED more colonists to achieve whatever their goals are (be it keeping up with cleaning & hauling workloads, or being able to defend against extremely large raiding parties).

I agree entirely.

I'm not desperate for that 50+ person colony, just the plays I've had so far have made it clear, I need to do that, or exploit mechanics (IE: wall my colonists in), in order to survive past X amount of time.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Serrate Bloodrage on March 25, 2014, 05:11:26 AM
My largest colony has 24 colonists and 3 turrets. They arnt walled in either. The colony is over 800 days old. Im glad I didnt read the forum and think turrets, or walling my colony in were important lol.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Tynan on March 25, 2014, 11:50:43 AM
Let's keep on topic please. Thanks.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Splinterbee on March 25, 2014, 07:24:22 PM
In the most recent update I've noticed when people are hungry they won't get food unless you force them too. When I run out of food and have wild plants for them to cut they ignore them and die unless I force them to cut the plants. Wish they were smart Enough to get food when there hungry in any way Even if it's not lying around  8)
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: bluntfeather on March 27, 2014, 07:28:01 PM
I don't know if it's been addressed but on day 118 or so I seem stuck at about 8 colonists. I had two prisoners with full loyalty+happiness for a long time with chats and food and the recruitment options enabled. After that didn't yield anything the beatings started and then they were at full fear+loyalty and that didn't work out either. So execution it is! Pretty funny that the colonists just go up and death touch the captive. An elaborate executions mod anyone? :) Also I know there is a limit to the number of colonists but I think I saw a picture w/ like 80 or so, and I definitely don't have that many.

The other thing I imagine has been brought up is the sometimes odd pathfinding where a colonist will take a longer route than necessary. One clear instance was when I was ordering a path through a mountain a ways away, which already had a path created going in but this one was a shortcut into the mountain as it was closer to the base. The colonists would sometimes go through the other older and longer path instead of the shorter one. If I recall right, they didn't pick anything up they were just taking a longer route.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Monkfish on March 27, 2014, 08:05:01 PM
I read here somewhere that corpses also count towards the total pawn count, so if you've got a shitload of graves full of bodies, that's likely the reason you couldn't recruit more.

I've also noticed odd pathfinding issues. Not sure what the cause would be, but it's a bit frustrating sometimes to see a colonist off for a leisurely stroll around your compound when there's a far faster route available.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: OnyxShadow on April 05, 2014, 01:08:50 PM
Expanding on the pathfinding: one of the most noticeable instances of this is when I assign mining a line between two areas. Colonists will mine one segment of one side, walk around to the other side and mine a single tile, walk back around and do another single tile, and so on. Hopefully that helps identify the underlying cause.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: OpposingForces on April 09, 2014, 06:02:56 PM
First usability issue i've noticed is the lack of feedback and/or transparency when it comes to why things are or aren't working. such as why isn't my wall getting built? after fiddling with priorities for awhile i figure out that i haven't got enough stone bricks. why isn't anybody making stone bricks? oh, there's not any stone debris close enough for what's set in the bill.
Second issue i've noticed is the lack of info for weapons. the only place to get detailed stats for the weapons is in the info tab in the coms station when a weapon / slave trader comes through. it'd be nice to have an info tab above it's basic info pane in the bottom left corner.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Skaven252 on July 26, 2014, 02:30:57 AM
It would be useful to make the survival meals stackable, so that colonists could haul more than one them at a time, and they wouldn't occupy so much space in the stockpiles. Since they're packaged, it makes sense that they'd be stackable (as opposed to cooked meals).

I currently have a pile of survival meals on the opposite corner of the map, left behind by raiders I managed to defeat. None of my colonists have the skill to cook fine meals, so they prefer walking across the map to eat the survival meals and end up "urgently hungry" by the time they get there. I've tried to get them to haul meals back to the colony as they go eat, but that's a bit micro-managey.

No, I don't have the heart to forbid the survival meals since it still makes the colonists happier than simple meals. :)
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Halinder on July 26, 2014, 03:58:09 AM
A major issue I had regarding cooking and something to do with a mod (ignoring that since it's not part of core gameplay however) is that you must build worktables with space for colonists to stand. The game is good at preventing this by not allowing you to build with walls covering those spaces to stand on, but somehow a rock chunk got in the way and no one wanted to cook. Anyone else have this issue?
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Shinzy on July 26, 2014, 04:41:43 AM
Quote from: Halinder on July 26, 2014, 03:58:09 AM
A major issue I had regarding cooking and something to do with a mod (ignoring that since it's not part of core gameplay however) is that you must build worktables with space for colonists to stand. The game is good at preventing this by not allowing you to build with walls covering those spaces to stand on, but somehow a rock chunk got in the way and no one wanted to cook. Anyone else have this issue?

You'd be surprised where loose rock chunks can be found at!
the rock chunk fairies keep dropping their loads at most inconvenient places =P
Anyway your colonists can't stand on the same tile with rock chunks
the boulders act like sand when there's any sort of mining and building happening

so if you built your house around the oven one of your constructors really helpfully hauled the stone on the way of the oven (maybe he got little too fed up eating potatoes every day)

also I've had tree grew in front of my mortar once =P have been tiling the floor under after that 

and one of my colonists got denied access to his bed after senor Saguero Cactus found really really nice spot to chill right in front of the door to his apartment
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: UrbanBourbon on July 26, 2014, 12:01:53 PM
- I believe my biggest annoyance still is that you can't order multiple colonists to attack the same target, not conveniently anyway. You have to issue the attack order one colonist at a time.

- I would like to know if anyone in my colony is unarmed. Possibly mark it in the name list in Overview?

- Speaking of which, getting that list in alphabetical order would be nice. Unsorted name list is a problem in large colonies. Various sorting methods would be cool, too.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Shinzy on July 26, 2014, 01:16:44 PM
Quote from: UrbanBourbon on July 26, 2014, 12:01:53 PM
- I believe my biggest annoyance still is that you can't order multiple colonists to attack the same target, not conveniently anyway. You have to issue the attack order one colonist at a time.

- I would like to know if anyone in my colony is unarmed. Possibly mark it in the name list in Overview?

- Speaking of which, getting that list in alphabetical order would be nice. Unsorted name list is a problem in large colonies. Various sorting methods would be cool, too.

You can order your colonists to attack same target
draft / select all / right click on target -> red X appears and they start shooting
or did you mean with the mortars? cause that's annoying =P

and I have to agree with you on the other two, my hunters keep starting to hunt muffalos with their fists after being incapacitated and lost their weapon which results them into getting the colonist needs help pop up =P
and there they are lying incapacitated half way across the map.
also caused some inconveniences at beginning of battles when I notice I have several unarmed people drafted and all ready to go
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Bog on July 26, 2014, 02:45:45 PM
I had a minor one the other day. I had a colonist who was building a wall defend a valley that lead to the edge of the map. I left the wall with a 1 wide hole in it.

Suddenly I had 1 idle colonist, and a bug report popped up that had to do with a person not able to do jobs. I clicked on the idle colonist notification, and it send me to the colonist on the other side of the wall, and she was just standing there.

I drafted her, make her walk 2 steps and drafted her. She sent idle again and the bug report popped up again. I checked her job overview, and she had plenty of things activated. For example, she had plant cutting activated and there were oaks on the screen marked for cutting.

I kept trying a few different things for a little while, then found the problem. A new oak tree had started growing in the 1 wide gap in the wall closing off the little valley, and there were no available jobs for the colonist in the ~150 tile outdoor cell she was in.

It was an easy fix in game, I just marked the oak with the "Cut Plants" order and she happily went and chopped it down. I thought it might be good to figure out a way for the game to say to people that a colonist is "stuck" when they can't get to any of the available jobs.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Sakata on July 26, 2014, 11:46:03 PM
Quote from: Bog on July 26, 2014, 02:45:45 PM
snip
I kept trying a few different things for a little while, then found the problem. A new oak tree had started growing in the 1 wide gap in the wall closing off the little valley, and there were no available jobs for the colonist in the ~150 tile outdoor cell she was in.

It was an easy fix in game, I just marked the oak with the "Cut Plants" order and she happily went and chopped it down. I thought it might be good to figure out a way for the game to say to people that a colonist is "stuck" when they can't get to any of the available jobs.
If the AI is blocked from 'home' zone, perhaps if there are small things like this in the way a bit of autonomy should be in order.  If I was walled in by a bush and was hungry, I'd cut the bush down and go eat. :D
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: BetaSpectre on July 26, 2014, 11:54:17 PM
The entire Socially Improper thing didn't make any sense to me for a while.
Also I hate it when a colonist decides to only haul 6 berries instead of 75 of them to a hopper.

Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: Rahjital on July 27, 2014, 03:27:43 AM
Fortunately the 'socially improper' thing has now been renamed in the unreleased version, so that problem will be gone once the next alpha is released.

Hauling a few items instead of many is often a problem, especially since the colonists drop their load if you order them to prioritise to haul another, even if they could easily hold both..

Stockpiles that get frequently taken from, like food in a kitchen, often have a lot of colonists doing pointless hauling (eg a cook takes 5 potatoes from his stockpile, a colonists goes to resupply it, soon the cook is finished and takes another 5 potatoes and the colonist goes there again, etc.) A "Resupply when under x% full" option would be very helpful there.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: UrbanBourbon on July 27, 2014, 05:26:17 AM
Quote from: BetaSpectre on July 26, 2014, 11:54:17 PM
Also I hate it when a colonist decides to only haul 6 berries instead of 75 of them to a hopper.

Ah, logistics. I'm always fascinated by it.


Logistics (the science of transporting items) is always a pain in the ass to handle. Several games don't do it right. I don't particularly blame the game developers but logistics certainly demands planning. I suspect the real tragedy is that the challenge of arranging good logistics catches the devs off-guard and that eats their morale, energy and causes delays.


One would think that moving stuff from A to B is simple but what happens when you have to pick from A and deliver to B, C and D, proceed to E to pick a new load and occasionally stockpile F and H, while keeping an eye on G at all times. Should the hauler pick his next task and route based on stockpile priority, stockpile level or the distance to the haulable item? Should he take into account how much he can actually haul? Should a single hauler intelligently pick and reserve the next 3 or 10 hauling tasks at once, keeping them unavailable from the other haulers? How many? What sort of swarm intelligence should we expect Tynan to pull off? Is it OK to frantically keep stockpile levels at 100% or is it OK to let the amounts drop to 50% before the restock order is issued? Do we specifically forbid filling stockpiles that are above 50% so that the hauler is free to do tend the other stockpiles? Or do we allow the levels to drop somewhere below 50%? What are the good numbers? Or do we code in sliders, counters and checkboxes for the players to adjust and hope that all the options don't overwhelm new players?


Elegant logistics is a matter of taste, perception and situation. There could be players who are perfectly fine with how RimWorld handles logistics (hauling) currently while others see room for improvement. One thing is sure - it's not easy to please everyone. Once you start deploying some truly intelligent methods, the future new players and even some present day players start questioning the changes... and then the dev gets to explain them from the ground up and hope that the less attentive ones have the energy to focus and understand what's going on.


But, I do agree, it's silly to pick 6 berries if there's a whole stack of them free to be hauled. The challenge lies in telling that to the software, while the software looks up to us with its puppy eyes.
Title: Re: Community, tell me your usability stories!
Post by: ApexPredator on July 27, 2014, 06:01:02 AM
Quote from: BetaSpectre on July 26, 2014, 11:54:17 PM
The entire Socially Improper thing didn't make any sense to me for a while.
Also I hate it when a colonist decides to only haul 6 berries instead of 75 of them to a hopper.

I agree the hauling issue can get annoying when there are numerous piles of berries all over the ground.

My big one for me is when you tell colonists to cut trees or mine metal on the other side of the map. They will walk out and do the task and leave the metal/wood on the ground while they walk back to base to eat/sleep/do something else empty handed.