I made it into the second eclipse in about an hour and a half, then ran out of time to play it more.
* Was lucky enough to have a geyser near me for the first time, I made good use of it and it changed the dynamics of the power management a lot.
* Text description on actions is a huge improvement!!! Now even when icons look similar I can quickly figure out what's what.
* Power visualization is great
* Had 3 new joins right out of the gate, very weird, seems like it's going to be easy now. It was.
* Was able to fairly easily fight the fire from a boomrat by selling walls on fire and telling my workers to cut the grass under the rest. Unlike before they did not catch on fire while cutting the grass.
* Needs to be feedback when you try to give a prioritization command on an item but can't because another worker has already been told to work on that item
* Traded a fair amount of food (but not more than I had), ended up with negative food.
* When a colonist swaps weapons, the one they dropped will be forbidden, doesn't make sense
* Actually I don't understand why weapons are forbidden by default in general
* Autosaves - great for when the game crashes
* Blasting charge did not clear debris, I was disappointed
* Hydroponics plants should say how much light they are receiving if they are not getting enough to grow, otherwise you have to go with overkill on the sun lamps.
* I would like a storyteller that ramps up the difficulty more aggressively, Cassandra is perfect for the first play but way too easy after that. This will increase the longevity of the game.
Overall I think you've improved the approachability of the game significantly, probably a lot less people will bail in that critical first hour of play when you make a public build.
I attached some screenshots, one half way through, and the other before I stopped
Side note: please increase the attachment size if you want reasonable images =)
[attachment deleted by admin: too old]
Noticed the food trade bug in build 203 also. The problem is the food is removed from stockpile twice: once when the trade button is pressed, and once when the trade window is closed.
Quote from: DanielW on September 27, 2013, 05:48:59 AM
* Text description on actions is a huge improvement!!! Now even when icons look similar I can quickly figure out what's what.
* Power visualization is great
Seems like useful information to add to the wiki (http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=79.0) ! ::) ;)
Quote from: DanielW on September 27, 2013, 05:48:59 AM
Side note: please increase the attachment size if you want reasonable images =)
http://www.imgur.com (that's one of many)
Thanks for the great feedback!
-"Had 3 new joins right out of the gate, very weird, seems like it's going to be easy now. It was." - A balance experiment. The storyteller doesn't adapt and make the rest of the game harder though.
-I do need a harder storyteller. You're right. I played the game too and noticed this.
-Colonists can fight fires. They will fight fires in all home zones. No need to sell all the walls. Clearly I should train the firefighting mechanics.
-Feedback - noted
-Will take a shot at the negative-food bug. Thanks Hypolite for finding when it happens.
-Weapons are forbidden because they tend to be dropped in combat. I don't want colonists running out to collect weapons in the middle of a firefight. Dwarfs are famous for doing this and getting themselves killed in DF; I don't want the same. Does this make sense?
-Did the game crash? I assume you put the crash report in the bugs forum.
-I've increased the max attachment size on the forums (finally figured out how)
Could you separate the cases where a colonist would drop a weapon because he/she is equipping another item?
Or could you just swap the weapons when a colonist is equipping a new weapon, for example exchanging equipped weapon with a weapon in a rack instead of dropping it at his foot?
Quote from: Hypolite on September 27, 2013, 01:25:20 PM
Could you separate the cases where a colonist would drop a weapon because he/she is equipping another item?
Or could you just swap the weapons when a colonist is equipping a new weapon, for example exchanging equipped weapon with a weapon in a rack instead of dropping it at his foot?
These are good ideas.
Quote from: Tynan on September 27, 2013, 01:14:26 PM
-Weapons are forbidden because they tend to be dropped in combat. I don't want colonists running out to collect weapons in the middle of a firefight. Dwarfs are famous for doing this and getting themselves killed in DF; I don't want the same. Does this make sense?
Hey, will the weapons have Ammo counters?I mean if a colonists shoots to much, he should ran out of ammo and will be only armed with melee. There, a strategy fair time will start, hide and kill.Hide where enemy cant see you and kill him,take his weapon and shoot. Hows that?
Quote from: Tynan on September 27, 2013, 01:14:26 PM
-Weapons are forbidden because they tend to be dropped in combat. I don't want colonists running out to collect weapons in the middle of a firefight. Dwarfs are famous for doing this and getting themselves killed in DF; I don't want the same. Does this make sense?
Is there a "combat state" for characters ?
If you go with Hypolite's idea, you'll most likely implement some sort of ownership for equipment (or even just weapons).
With those two flags, you could probably come up with a rule that says:
IF [NOT in_combat]
THEN pickup_weapon=true
ELSE IF [weapon_last_owner == me]
THEN pickup_weapon=true
ELSE pickup_weapon=false
END
END
Picking up the weapon would then change its ownership... well, there's prettier possibilities, but you get the point :P
In the end I hope to make a generalized danger awareness system so people don't take jobs next to blazing fires or firefights. Then they wouldn't need to default to forbidden.
Quote from: thekillergreece on September 27, 2013, 01:33:55 PM
Hey, will the weapons have Ammo counters?I mean if a colonists shoots to much, he should ran out of ammo and will be only armed with melee.
Please don't. Or if so, make ammo plentiful. Micro-managing ammo will not make the game any better. Realism does not always equal more enjoyable gameplay.
Quote from: Sire on September 28, 2013, 05:33:37 PM
Quote from: thekillergreece on September 27, 2013, 01:33:55 PM
Hey, will the weapons have Ammo counters?I mean if a colonists shoots to much, he should ran out of ammo and will be only armed with melee.
Please don't. Or if so, make ammo plentiful. Micro-managing ammo will not make the game any better. Realism does not always equal more enjoyable gameplay.
I disagree, I think needing ammo would make for a more interesting game.
I agree with Sire. Even if it resembles a survival game where every cartridge counts, I don't feel it is the kind of game that could benefit it. A TPS/FPS with zombies? Totally worth it. A top down storytelling-based game with three to ten characters to manage? I'm not so sure.
I can see it as a mod, though, with more more zombies/monsters and less colonists/building management. But not in the main game.
The problem is, what is the right amount of ammo the raiders should bring? Too few, and most fights will end up hand to hand, turrets would be useless because of their high rate of fire. Too much, and it wouldn't matter that the ammo system existed. Of course, there could be a hybrid solution where colonists would find much less ammo on raiders' corpses than what they actually had access to when still controlled by the AI, but it feels like a crutch and not belonging to this kind of game.
I'm somewhat in the middle on this, ammo should definitely be plentiful, but I still think that it should exist. Maybe only larger weapons should have ammo? Like, if you build a gigantic future catapult for some reason, you should need to build catapult ammo. But for a gun, no big deal.
Here's a thought
Energy Weapons require ammo, but all they need to resupply is power charges which can be recharged by a power charger in base.
Solid Slug weapons don't require ammo, but take far longer to reload.
Ammo is a real idea; it's kind of weird it's missing. There's a lot of other stuff I want to address first, though. Ammo is lower priority because
-It wouldn't really become important very often
-When it was important, it would often obstruct players in an annoying way. I classify this system as a new way to obstruct players, not a new way to give them opportunities. Yes, interesting stories could emerge from ammo shortages, but I'm not sure it's worth the annoyances of dealing with the logistics behind it
-There are many other systems that rate higher in design benefit versus design cost, to my mind. Making the AI manage ammo well would be really hard; they payoff would be minimal.
If we did do ammo, the first version would be limited to artillery pieces (which aren't yet in the game, though they were there in a super early prototype last year, with FTL-style direct controls)
Quote from: Tynan on September 29, 2013, 08:50:29 PM
-When it was important, it would often obstruct players in an annoying way. I classify this system as a new way to obstruct players, not a new way to give them opportunities. Yes, interesting stories could emerge from ammo shortages, but I'm not sure it's worth the annoyances of dealing with the logistics behind it
That's exactly my thoughts. It's almost like you've written a book about game design ;)
Quote from: Tynan on September 29, 2013, 08:50:29 PM
Ammo is a real idea; it's kind of weird it's missing. There's a lot of other stuff I want to address first, though. Ammo is lower priority because
-It wouldn't really become important very often
-When it was important, it would often obstruct players in an annoying way. I classify this system as a new way to obstruct players, not a new way to give them opportunities. Yes, interesting stories could emerge from ammo shortages, but I'm not sure it's worth the annoyances of dealing with the logistics behind it
-There are many other systems that rate higher in design benefit versus design cost, to my mind. Making the AI manage ammo well would be really hard; they payoff would be minimal.
If we did do ammo, the first version would be limited to artillery pieces (which aren't yet in the game, though they were there in a super early prototype last year, with FTL-style direct controls)
Perhaps you could have a random event where there is an ammo shortage and all your colonists and gun turrets shoot half as much to conserve ammo?
Quote from: Turbo on October 12, 2013, 07:55:49 PM
Perhaps you could have a random event where there is an ammo shortage and all your colonists and gun turrets shoot half as much to conserve ammo?
The infamous
ammo-blight ? ::) :P
Quote from: British on October 13, 2013, 04:32:40 AM
Quote from: Turbo on October 12, 2013, 07:55:49 PM
Perhaps you could have a random event where there is an ammo shortage and all your colonists and gun turrets shoot half as much to conserve ammo?
The infamous ammo-blight ? ::) :P
Yes, the fabled blight of '63. ;)