Messages

Maybe do the MGS thing where guns are coded to someone's genetic identity or whatever and won't work if someone just picks them up? Could also add a crafting recipe to remove this and risk breaking the gun?

Erm...You do?

The game does tell you if a colonist is attacked and needs treatment as soon as one is injured.

And that's too late to draft them to shoot the attacking animal - I think what he's saying is that an animal hunting a colonist should be treated like a mad animal or a raider - with the flee, ignore or attack modes which your colonists have when not drafted.

I feel like things like this could be custom scenarios - a whole different game mode. The combat system in this game (with a few improvements like secondary weapons) is probably solid enough that it could support scenarios like this. Hell people could probably create their own scenarios and upload them for others to try to beat!

@Flay

No just have people give in saves for their colonies on small map size and then Tyran can put those in the game instead of generated ones.

Brilliant! Just so long as not everyone makes death boxes with turrets out the wazoo! Of course there should be a few of these though...

Maybe a good way to handle this would be to make some raiders like traders in that they arrive, have a leader guy who you can "trade" (surrender goods to) with a demand for 500 or 1000 silver worth of goods, and if you either don't give up this stuff or lob a mortar shell in to them or whatever they attack like they do normally.

I don't think every group of raiders would be like this, and maybe whether they offer this could be dependent on how you've treated raiders in the past? So stuff like:

• Releasing prisoners
• Fulfilling demands
• Giving goodwill silver through the comms console

Would increase your relationship with that faction and if you're able to get to green they'd either come by less often, be more willing to accept tribute and maybe even offer protection if you call for it (they'd want to protect their good little productive colony who gives them what they demand when they demand it, you're under their protection so long as you pony up when they want it.)

This could make it interesting when you're just starting out on Randy and he makes 6 raiders appear while you're still only got your 3 colonists with a knife, pistol and rifle and no turrets set up yet. Do you give away your starting medicine or fight it out and hope to not use as much medicine recovering? Do you pay them the 500 silver they demand and risk not being able to buy the awesome shit you need from a outlander trading group?

That sort of forced play usually isn't too well received.  It is kind of a block.  Claustrophobic isn't a bad idea, but it would have to be separate from the mountain.  Just negative mood more from small spaces.  That is why it should be something in mechanics that makes it harder to take advantage of being underground.  So natural lighting, growing zones, and wind/solar power generators are the big ones.  If the AI went after those opposed to going through auto killboxes, then it means that a player will at least in part need to still build above ground.

The disadvantage stuff should feel natural.  Bugs were a good one.  But if there were the cave in potential, that would make it interesting.  Claustrophobic with small roofed areas in general would be profound as well.  Psychological sicknesses.  Phobias acting just like frostbite or physical ailments.  Over time it just increases.  So if outside buildings, then your character is always getting a bit of sun, keeps that ailment from ever manifesting. 

To keep it and cabin fever down in a mountain base, it would have to be massively sprawling.  Large rooms and hallways.  That then means more investment in the power systems and less efficient work due to larger areas to traverse.  An indirect penalty instead of a direct one.  It also is one that can still be countered if a person just likes the in mountain playstyle.

Cave in's - oh man, I can already imagine it now. A colonist gets trapped behind a cave in and you've got to dig them out before they starve. Would lead to some pretty cool stories!

Whenever you click on a corpse, It should show the cause of death, i.e. Starvation, blood loss, etc.

Maybe something subtle for deaths caused by the story teller when they don't want you recruiting more colonists from prisoners - "shock" or something

I feel like the best way to treat organ damage like this would be blood loss - make any destroyed organs bleeding injuries that can't be treated the normal way. This means you might have to harvest a liver from a downed raider to immediately transplant into your dying colonist to keep them alive after a bad raid. Maybe bed rest in a medical bed can slow the blood loss from this (think dialysis) but unless they receive a new organ they're going to die.

Mods are probably a better place for a more in-depth organ damage system like the one you describe I think.

Mood swings (bipolar?) - penalty/bonus from the "feeling terrible/bad/good/great" are doubled

I think time should be paused when you're conducting a raid - so long as your raiders are away from the home map for a few days. This would be a really great addition to the game though - going from raiding small tribe villages with like 10 tribals, 2 of whom are willing to fight you, the rest just run away, for some food & leather to fortified pirate bases for some bionic limbs and brain implants.

Of course this would be really risky too - any incapacitated colonist would need to be dragged back which slows down the return of your raiders AND impacts how much loot they can carry back, or maybe they just die on the return trip if you don't bring enough medicine & medical treatment skill.

Mood losses would be higher if you kill people on offense too, -3 from seeing a stranger die, -5 from killing someone on offense, maybe an extra -10 for killing someone who had surrendered or was cowering?

Of course the AI in these places would be very different and difficult to do - they obviously shouldn't know you're there the instant you arrive on the map. Do we want to make it possible to stealth around into positions before opening fire ala Xcom2? Or should they react on a one by one basis to seeing your colonists. Would fog of war work in this kind of scenario? Maybe let your guys watch a place for a few hours or a day to get an idea of numbers vs charging in immediately to have a more risky, but less time-consuming raid? If gunshots are heard, would non-combatants run away while defenders run towards the gunshots? Would creating a mimic grenade item that lures defenders in to a killzone be OP?

Agreed - this should take a machining table to do. I think there should only be a generic "ammo" in vanilla which each colonist keeping some in their inventory that works for all guns for when they need to reload (if they reload, maybe just keep the shooting as it is with no reloads but wind up and cool down times.) AI Turrets need an amount of this ammo loaded in to them to keep shooting too.

This means before machining is researched ammo will be very scarce, and even afterwards if a colony runs out of steel they'll probably quickly run out of ammo too. A new colony would need to start with a fair amount of ammo to feed the rifle & pistol, and any early turrets. Obviously pirates would drop their ammo as well when killed, but hostile tribes would be ammo sinks, unless you fight them on their own terms.

Bows shouldn't use ammo, so there is an option if a colony runs out of ammo beyond "run at the dudes with guns and hope for the best"

I've seen this suggested a few times and I'd like to flesh it out more.

Secondary (or more) weapons - I've got a few ideas about how this could work well:

- Colonists can equip 2 or 3 weapons each (maybe make this dependent on clothing - more pockets = more weapon slots?)
- Equipped weapons should have a speed penalty depending on the weapon size - a knife or pistol would be 0.5% or 1%, while a minigun would be 10-20% or more. If someone is going to be hauling around a sniper rifle, a longsword, grenades, armour and a helmet they aren't going to be as fast as someone with just a pistol and grenades, especially if they're carrying all this while doing day to day work.
- Colonists can be given 2 equipment modes - normal & battle-ready with equipment reserved just for them between the 2 modes. To avoid the speed penalty from having to haul their weapons around constantly colonists can leave weapons in their bedroom or in an armory until a raid happens, and when that does happen there's a scramble to get to the armory then to defensive positions before the raiders arrive. Either that or colonists have a permanent speed penalty from being fully equipped constantly (maybe a mood minus too? -5 from wearing an armour vest for a few hours? Maybe a personality trait which provides +5 for the same?)

Weapons having a speed penalty would make pistols, PDW's etc more desirable as well - low weight weapons which don't interfere with day to day work so much but also give a colonist the ability to defend themselves to a degree if they get caught outside in a raid or a mad animal or something.

While drafted, being able to tell a colonist to switch weapon would be important. If a colonist has a sniper rifle, a pistol and grenades you want to be able to tell them which to use when - this game is partly real time tactics after all.

Really keen to flesh this idea out even more - let's have a good discussion folks! Maybe start with a discussion about how much each weapon should slow down a colonist?

I think a good work-around for doing more to have gameplay out in the open would be the ability to send your colonists off on raids or explorations of your own to find resources or go on hunting trips or whatever - you designate a few colonists as raiders or hunters, they disappear off map for a day or two, then you get to load into a new map with these colonists (probably best to make time pause on your home map during this time) and play out the hunt or the raid or whatever.

This would require an overhaul of the inventory system (maybe not for hunts - each colonist brings back a muffalo corpse) and the ability to generate new random maps with other factions on them which I imagine wouldn't be quick and easy but would encourage outdoorsy play on these away from home maps. Let people hunker down in their mountains if they wish, but if they don't want to risk a few colonists on a raid on a nearby pirate base to claim a few bionic limbs or an AI core or some Plasteel - that's on them.

Few ideas:

Colonists should clean their own bedrooms as a joy activity - similar to meditation or going for a walk. Makes more sense than having the designated maid bust in to your bedroom and clean it while you're out at work in some ways.

Animal sleeping spots (and cloth animal beds etc) in bedrooms should be restricted to whoever's bedroom's pet it is - e.g. if John has a husky assigned to him, the husky should sleep in John's bedroom if there's an animal sleeping spot in it, rather than a random llama. I know this can be worked around with designated animal areas but if there's backend stuff that can be done to make this happen it'd be really cute.

Manned turrets? Similar to mortars as they are currently? I know we have the sentry turrets currently, but having bigger stationery guns could be a really cool thing - be they minigun turrets, rocket turrets or another kind. If raiders who drop directly on you took one of these over that could lead to a really climatic battle too! They'd have a high initial resource cost and maybe require constant ammo manufacturing like mortars?