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Been away for a while but came back to try out A16, loving the updates so far, too!

There are a couple of UI suggestions I'd like to make, based on where I am finding issues in my own games:

1 - Current job summary. The work manager screen is brilliant, the ability to learn how it works quickly, combined with the massive level of labour control you get by mastering it, makes it a fantastic UI element.

The only thing I can't do, is work out where things are going wrong. If I notice a job is not being done (e.g. hauling), who do I raise priority on? I could make it second priority behind cooking for my dedicated cook but what if that cook is working on meals full time? I could assign a backup cook so the cooking has down time, allowing the hauling to get done but I face the same problem again with that pawn. All I can do now is make iterative changes and watch the stockpiles/pawns to see what's changing. I have no idea if it's fixable through prioritisation or if it's a labour shortage.

Couple of suggested solutions would be an 'all jobs' list but that potentially gets really long. The alternative, which I think would be far more useful to me, personally, is to have a list of what each colonist is doing right now in a table format. I can currently pause and look through them by selecting each but again, that started to feel like a repetitive iterative process because I have to take samples throughout the day. Watching a table and seeing who is doing what and how often is a really quick, simple way to get a picture of where colonist time is going!

2 - Required skill visibility. Not that it's a huge problem to gameplay but the means of checking what skill is needed for a task (mainly Bills) is somewhat convoluted. Some sort of graphical representation and/or text outside the detail menu would be really handy.

3 - Separation of the architect/orders menu. The tabs system works really well for every tab bar that one, for me. Every other tab brings up a screen that I don't need all to often, it's neat, clear, etc.

The architect menu, on the other hand, leaves me constantly opening and closing a UI element to the extent that it has become a negative factor on the gameplay. Separating the orders menu and having another permanent UI element would make play a lot smoother in my opinion. The screen real estate could be controlled by having small icons and if the bigger icons are wanted, can be left in the architect menu in addition.

4 - Allow simultaneous selection and architect elements. There have more occasions than I can count of wanting to look through the build menu or issue an order while also selecting a pawn or object. It's not the convenience of not losing my selection, rather that the two are directly related (the selection is providing data towards whatever I'm opening the menu for). Having the selection remain, say just be pushed up above the architect menu while it's open, would be fantastic. I realise there are some potential conflicts there but simply clearing selection when you click an interfering button, rather than just the menu, would be one solution.

Been running this for quite a few in-game days now and all seems to be working except I can't sell the guest bed item to any trader type. Also appears that guests are never leaving silver (every guest has left on max hospitality rating so far), nor buying anything from the room but these last 2 need more testing on my part.

P.S. Great mod, great idea, thanks!

Hi Evul,

Sorry for being away so long. I was very sick shortly after I posted here last and after getting over that I had a lot of of catching up to do with irl stuff.

Pretty much back to normal now though, so I will update my data to the current alpha and finish off that spread sheet for you

-Bob

Okay. Also, keep in mind that you are intended to die eventually. I'd typically aim for player death somewhere between day 60-150. In future alphas this will make more sense since there will be an endgame and an actual way to win

Wow... Then too easy. The animal raids are a bit 'iffy' and I can see why people get caught out by them. I was lucky enough never to get a situation that was as bad as some described but I have 2 colonies at over 300 days O.o

Also, when I answered the equivalent poll for 4e I was at 400+ days on that one!

My big concern is inflating the number of objects. Now you're looking at:....

I didn't mean to suggest that much duplication. Most things need 2-3 'tiers' at most, imo. For the beds, 2 would be enough... sleeping spot gives you an immediate solution but comes with the negative thought downside, a wood bed (or any early material) would be neutral and a late game bed that takes a bit of investment compared to the earlier one, would give a positive bonus. For things that don't have specific impacts on the colonists like that, though, it really only needs to be 1 item made of a material that allows it to be introduced at whatever point of the game seems to be appropriate.

One of the first things I looked at in A4 was wood floors to see if they had a nice bonus, that's another possible benefit for keeping these materials late game too.

All-in-all I think as long as long as each item has a unique place in the game then there aren't too many! When you start getting new items that come along all the time and give little to no benefit in use, then players are going to skip over things and they are a waste.

Awesome! I don't know why but I enjoy seeing just how much information I can get out of data sets (pretty much why I ended up doing what I do). I'll put a model together over the next day or two and see what relevant comparisons I can come up with! Once I have that changes and additions will be much faster to add.

I like that there is a vulnerability, adds a strategic consideration rather than just out shooting every type of threat! Of course as it is, its just an easy mode option.

But I'd rather see a solution to this through mob synergies. For example one that has a devastating melee attack but only moderate weapons (compared to the centipedes). You can't run up to it and punch it just to disable it's weapons so now you have to either shoot it out with the group or run up to the centipede and punch it while taking shots. The shots are weaker but your colonist isn't in cover!

For me, I would now be weighing up how much damage the shooting troops can do to the melee capable one if I charge the centipede... can I bring down that HP pool before it shots the no-cover-colonist(s) to bits. Alternatively, can I focus-fire it down while taking the much higher income fire from both so that I can charge the centipede after?

I most certainly think it should stay the way it is.

1. It's scalable as it is, making it all one would limit (at least on the logical level) adding things later. Having a reason to keep a wood production chain running into late-game would also add depth. That's not to say it isn't scalable merged, just doesn't feel at all right to me (that is, if there is any intention of adding more depth to wood in general).

2. Space! The more space we need to run production chains the more we have to think of creative ways to defend larger and larger areas. It also adds to elements like designing efficient bases.

3. Consistency. Metal is the only resource that doesn't need refining (off the top of my head), well discounting that food can be used raw, just with a penalty. Personally, I would rather see metal need refinement too (for more advanced things like walls, while being usable raw for basic needs like power conduits - see next point!)

4. Tech-tree ( ) expansion. I would rather more depth to the tech advancement than less. Something along the line of; early wood (logs) gives you a basic wall and can, reasonably quickly, be turned into all the basic needs (i.e. doors, basic bed, etc.) at the trade-off of labor time. Stone then requires refinement to use at all (other than as cover) but provides an early strong material. Metal could then be used for basic essential things (power conduits, component in the plank wall with conduit, etc.) but needs refinement to make become a balanced type of building material, hence a wall that is stronger than wood and still has conduit but not as strong as stone.

I guess in short, I prefer systems and chains. They are what makes the game interesting and forces me to think about how I am going set things up. As a single unit resource I think wood would become a trivial starting bump, just slowing down the overall pace in the first few minuets. As it is, it forces more consideration of prioritising colonist work and early survival elements and provides a plentiful building material for safer areas of a base while you move up the tech tree and/or mine to build up more suitable front-line materials.

The only real issue is the attrition of logs over time (since they can't be recreated from planks). But even with the map deforested, forgetting to suspend the bill, not setting a 'do until x' limit on the bill and not having any log walls left... they can still be regrown!

I don't see the colonist time spent chopping as a relevant reason to merge it at all. Colonist prioritisation and time management is... well... kinda the point of the game!

My only issue was with the timing of the first Mechanoid. I'd had 1 combat supplier since the start (pretty early comms. station), Lee-Enfield was the best they had (I didn't buy it, as it happens). Had a few raids, all but 1 tribal to this point so I had a few sticks... some with string, others with pointy bits. The one raid that was from the more advanced faction was all pistols.

So with 4 people, equipped with 3 pistols and a Lee-Enfield (and a best possible, by this stage, of 2/2) an incendiary one decided to show up! I survived because of the targeting mechanics, one guy was always closer than the others and always moving to avoid as many shots as possible. Even with the large splash I could dodge quite a few and those that hit didn't take, so the damage per hit was minimal (as was the wandering around in panic). Had it been one of the other two weapons I'm pretty sure that would have an instant game end!

However, that aside just about everything else is on the too easy side for me. The thing is, I find the more the game adds, the more you need space to incorporate it and therefore, the more you have think about creative defenses. The fact that there are very few production chains that require any significant amount of space at the moment is (in my opinion) what makes it easy (as opposed to any pressing need to tweak the Storyteller side).

Also, stone is still very accessible early and the AI's tendency to path around stone walls, over making any attempt to breach them, makes it a little too easy to control fights much to soon in the game. Not sure how that's fixable though! Maybe a little later (tech unlock wise) and a mob type that has the means to breach it within a reasonable time-frame in the late-game.

But enough drifting... overall, had a one off event that was extremely hard and had a 66% chance to be nearly unstoppable at the stage of the game. But if we assume that to be a 1-off then the overall difficulty is very easy.

Hi Evul,

I'm happy to do some testing, love the variety this mod brings so I'm using it most games anyway.

I would also be interested in running numbers for you, if it's of use. I create pretty complex financial & business models for a living so with Excel and 10 mins, I could probably tell you which weapons aren't balanced before I open the game! Can't really factor in non-quantifiable benefits (e.g. the vanilla T-9's disorientation effect) but since that's only a couple of weapons I think it would still be very informative.

If you think that is something that would be useful to you/the mod let me know!

If it helps, I use a system based on the Passion feature.

If they have a 'Burning' passion I set that skill(s) to priority 1 and 'Interested' skills are 2. The exceptions are fire fighting and doctoring. Fire fighting needs an all-in approach if you don't get to it fast enough (e.g. Molotov fire spreading while you finish a firefight) and doctoring because I don't like colonists dying at all... let alone while there is someone in their room watering a Daylilly >.<

Once you have that you can add/subtract priorities based on this that are under/over manned.

The reason is that this makes it far more likely that someone who will benefit more from doing a skill is the one to do it, followed by ones that benefit slightly less. This way I get the maximum amount of skill ranking out of my guys short of manually assigning every task to the one I want to get the practice. The ones that learn very little are normally unlikely to attempt a skill unless there is a lot of it going around, I normally get many more workers than my 1/2 priorities replanting after a blight, for example but this helps in those kinda times and gets the colony back on track nice and quickly while not overriding every single job of lower priority as it would on non-manual version.