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General Discussion / Best tool for hunting?
« on: January 01, 2015, 12:04:51 AM »
Now that Alpha 8 is out, the wiki seems to be out of date on weapons: http://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Weapons
My question for everyone is, what weapon/s is the best for hunting animals with? So far I've been using spears that my colonists craft, but I'm unsure if things like maces or swords would be better, and they all take so long to craft I don't want to make one of each to test them.
My question for everyone is, what weapon/s is the best for hunting animals with? So far I've been using spears that my colonists craft, but I'm unsure if things like maces or swords would be better, and they all take so long to craft I don't want to make one of each to test them.
2
Stories / Happytown: The happiest little town you ever did see (Challenge build)
« on: March 16, 2014, 06:54:49 AM »
Hey everyone. I was getting bored of the game after having a lot of my colonies fall into the same pattern: Start game, find where the steam vents are, build small houses, and then burrow into the nearest defensible mountainside like a bunch of dwarves. So, to mix things, up, I decided to try a challenge: To try and make an entirely outside, house based town. Instead of focusing purely on efficiency and defense, the goal of this new colony was to make it aesthetically pleasing, and to try and make my colonists as happy as possible. To complete these goals easier, I'll be playing on Phoebe Friendly.
Meet the beginnings of Happytown. What's one of the most important things to make sure your town is happy? The pub obviously! You'll have to use your imagination for the booze, but this is the humble beginnings of my town. The main room is for our colonists to enjoy food, the smaller back room is the kitchen, where the cooking and butchery tables are located. The green stockpile is for raw foods, the smaller blue stockpile is for raw meats, which are stored in a separate refrigerator room. In the back is the large red dumping stockpile. The rooms at the pub are tiny and dark, but these are only temporary housing. Soon my founding 3 will have proper homes
And we have some friends! The town is still just the founding three staying in the pub rooms, but two wandering travelers were found and quickly captured. No prison was constructed yet, so they temporarily live in the dining room. Sadly, I discovered this means haulers will not haul the rocks away, and colonists cannot eat in there. You can see hints of future expansions in progress around to the sides as well. Off to the right is the town hall, and to the left is a hint of one of our first houses. All of the floor tiles you can see are the start of the main road, which will be stone tiles.
Our first shop! Obviously in a proper town, goods are produced in shops, and where else would these shops be except for in the heart of town? This is the stone cutter's shop, with a small stockpile to store raw stones and cut bricks to construct the roads. Next door is our first house, tucked into the open corner. I want each house to be relatively unique, so they'll be placed in odd locations or have different sizes and decorations.
Expansion was needed rapidly however. The room to the south will be dedicated to holding raw rocks, while the stockpile in the shop itself will be just for bricks. To the left, Romero is constructing a new home for our growing population!
The gun shop! This was intended to be our main stockpile of weaponry, where excess guns go. Weapon racks were the storage counters, and the stone cutter table is the counter top (Use your imagination). Eventually, I DO change this into a new building, but this was my first run of the area. And as you can see, the roads are finally being put into place!
Woah! Lots of stuff happening here! The stonecutter's shop is off to the right, where a bed was added for the crafter to sleep in. But the main focus of this picture is all the new houses! This is the main housing wing of the town for now, and you can see four houses added in the center, and in the middle is some random patches of concrete road, to simulate a back ally that's fallen into a bit of a disrepair. The interior of the houses are all slowly being replaced with concrete. And to the left you can see a portion of the newly added hydroponics farm. The farm plots are further left past it, and are mostly dedicated to strawberries.
This is the garden walk. This is the immediate south east of the rock cutter's shop, that's the structure above the agave plants. More housing is to the sides of the road, and I converted every patch of available fertile ground into growing plots. As you can see, they alternate between all the decorative flowers. The ground to the southeast will be converted into a garden eventually.
The prison! This was built against a cliff face that was hollowed out slightly to make it flat, and then filled with the beds. I elected to make it all one large room so prisoners can talk to each other, to get happiness buffs in addition to the flowers. As you can see, it was originally made from metal walls, but following a fire that almost allowed the prisoners to escape, it was reinforced with stone walls.
And now we finally get to see the town hall, it took me quite a bit to finish even though I started it almost right off the bat. The town hall seemed to be the most obvious place to place the trade comm and beacon, and the research table made its way into there too. In the front room is the secretary's desk, and in the large dome attached to the back is the mayor's office. I was unfortunately forced to represent desks with walls, due to lack of properly sized tables.
I've dubbed these "The Tears". By this point my town's mined every single exposed metal vein in the map, and even though I have a huge excess of resources I decided to put my miners to work hunting for ore. The entire south side of the map is covered with mountains, and I've dragged out a whole set of long tunnels into the mountain. I'll dig them deeper as I go, and clean out whatever ore I find in the hills.
After collecting so much ore I constructed a set of storage sheds. The building to the north used to be the gun shop. After getting my trade system in place, I gutted it out and replaced it with my main store of batteries for the town. One of the two center buildings is dedicated to resources, and the second is my emergency backup power. After having issues in the past due to power losses, I've learned to do this: Make rooms dedicated to batteries, let them fill, then disconnect them from the grid. If you loose all your power in a shortage, or something like an eclipse happens, you can reconnect them with a single conduit to add their extra power to keep you coasting along.
To finish things off here's the current town roster, so you can see my colonists and their skill distribution. I like to enable every skill on every colonist, just to make sure they idle as least as possible, and firefighting is always high priority; After that though, I just assign skills based on what the character's passions and skills are based on, or what I currently have a need for. I always try to have at least one person dedicated to every skill so jobs will always get done though.
This was just after a psychic wave hit the town and a herd of muffalo attacked. 2 brave colonists lost their lives in the defense of the town, and 5 were incapacitated. As you can see in the top right, the muffalo meat is rolling in like mad after killing so many of them. This was the first major loss of the town, so I decided to call a break for the day. I hope you guys enjoy the adventures of happytown and join me next time as I continue to expand and decorate the town!
Meet the beginnings of Happytown. What's one of the most important things to make sure your town is happy? The pub obviously! You'll have to use your imagination for the booze, but this is the humble beginnings of my town. The main room is for our colonists to enjoy food, the smaller back room is the kitchen, where the cooking and butchery tables are located. The green stockpile is for raw foods, the smaller blue stockpile is for raw meats, which are stored in a separate refrigerator room. In the back is the large red dumping stockpile. The rooms at the pub are tiny and dark, but these are only temporary housing. Soon my founding 3 will have proper homes
And we have some friends! The town is still just the founding three staying in the pub rooms, but two wandering travelers were found and quickly captured. No prison was constructed yet, so they temporarily live in the dining room. Sadly, I discovered this means haulers will not haul the rocks away, and colonists cannot eat in there. You can see hints of future expansions in progress around to the sides as well. Off to the right is the town hall, and to the left is a hint of one of our first houses. All of the floor tiles you can see are the start of the main road, which will be stone tiles.
Our first shop! Obviously in a proper town, goods are produced in shops, and where else would these shops be except for in the heart of town? This is the stone cutter's shop, with a small stockpile to store raw stones and cut bricks to construct the roads. Next door is our first house, tucked into the open corner. I want each house to be relatively unique, so they'll be placed in odd locations or have different sizes and decorations.
Expansion was needed rapidly however. The room to the south will be dedicated to holding raw rocks, while the stockpile in the shop itself will be just for bricks. To the left, Romero is constructing a new home for our growing population!
The gun shop! This was intended to be our main stockpile of weaponry, where excess guns go. Weapon racks were the storage counters, and the stone cutter table is the counter top (Use your imagination). Eventually, I DO change this into a new building, but this was my first run of the area. And as you can see, the roads are finally being put into place!
Woah! Lots of stuff happening here! The stonecutter's shop is off to the right, where a bed was added for the crafter to sleep in. But the main focus of this picture is all the new houses! This is the main housing wing of the town for now, and you can see four houses added in the center, and in the middle is some random patches of concrete road, to simulate a back ally that's fallen into a bit of a disrepair. The interior of the houses are all slowly being replaced with concrete. And to the left you can see a portion of the newly added hydroponics farm. The farm plots are further left past it, and are mostly dedicated to strawberries.
This is the garden walk. This is the immediate south east of the rock cutter's shop, that's the structure above the agave plants. More housing is to the sides of the road, and I converted every patch of available fertile ground into growing plots. As you can see, they alternate between all the decorative flowers. The ground to the southeast will be converted into a garden eventually.
The prison! This was built against a cliff face that was hollowed out slightly to make it flat, and then filled with the beds. I elected to make it all one large room so prisoners can talk to each other, to get happiness buffs in addition to the flowers. As you can see, it was originally made from metal walls, but following a fire that almost allowed the prisoners to escape, it was reinforced with stone walls.
And now we finally get to see the town hall, it took me quite a bit to finish even though I started it almost right off the bat. The town hall seemed to be the most obvious place to place the trade comm and beacon, and the research table made its way into there too. In the front room is the secretary's desk, and in the large dome attached to the back is the mayor's office. I was unfortunately forced to represent desks with walls, due to lack of properly sized tables.
I've dubbed these "The Tears". By this point my town's mined every single exposed metal vein in the map, and even though I have a huge excess of resources I decided to put my miners to work hunting for ore. The entire south side of the map is covered with mountains, and I've dragged out a whole set of long tunnels into the mountain. I'll dig them deeper as I go, and clean out whatever ore I find in the hills.
After collecting so much ore I constructed a set of storage sheds. The building to the north used to be the gun shop. After getting my trade system in place, I gutted it out and replaced it with my main store of batteries for the town. One of the two center buildings is dedicated to resources, and the second is my emergency backup power. After having issues in the past due to power losses, I've learned to do this: Make rooms dedicated to batteries, let them fill, then disconnect them from the grid. If you loose all your power in a shortage, or something like an eclipse happens, you can reconnect them with a single conduit to add their extra power to keep you coasting along.
To finish things off here's the current town roster, so you can see my colonists and their skill distribution. I like to enable every skill on every colonist, just to make sure they idle as least as possible, and firefighting is always high priority; After that though, I just assign skills based on what the character's passions and skills are based on, or what I currently have a need for. I always try to have at least one person dedicated to every skill so jobs will always get done though.
This was just after a psychic wave hit the town and a herd of muffalo attacked. 2 brave colonists lost their lives in the defense of the town, and 5 were incapacitated. As you can see in the top right, the muffalo meat is rolling in like mad after killing so many of them. This was the first major loss of the town, so I decided to call a break for the day. I hope you guys enjoy the adventures of happytown and join me next time as I continue to expand and decorate the town!
3
Ideas / New AI storyteller events
« on: March 02, 2014, 05:08:57 AM »
Currently it feels like there isn't enough random events for the storytellers to draw from. After a while all the Cassandra-ish storytellers have escalated the difficulty to the point where it's just wave after wave of raiders and wild animal attacks, while occasionally blowing up your stuff with electrical issues and solar flares. Phoebe doesn't have enough "friendly" sort of events to give your colonists, the only non-damaging events being limited to stuff like dropping resources or people, or the wandering travelers. Even the wacky Randy Random runs out of tricks after a while and feels bland with all the repetition you see after a while.
More random events would really help liven things up after a while, either rare or dangerous disasters to shake things up, to really useful events that could help you or add new resources, to even just random things that help the world you're living on feel a bit more alive outside of your little square level area. Here are some of the events I've thought of so far:
Animal Migration: A group of animals (Probably muffalo) travel across the map during the course of their migration. This would act similar to the wandering traveler event, a group of animals spawn at one edge of the map, and travel towards another edge of the map and despawn. They might break down walls or machines in their path, or accidentally trample electrical wires underfoot. This could be very damaging to a colony if a distant field of solar panels is accidentally cut off or broken down by the muffalo, or it could mean nothing at all if they pass by without much harm, or it could even be a boon, providing a sudden increase in huntable animals for your colonists to eat if you're short on food.
Muffalo Breeding Season: Muffalo are normally pretty passive animals. They won't really bother you, even if you get right up next to them, and won't really fight even if you start shooting at them. This would change that temporarily. During the breeding season, the herd would draw close together and stay near each other. Baby muffalo would spawn in the area during this time, giving you extra animals to hunt eventually. But, any people who get too close to the herd during this time would be attacked by angry muffalo trying to protect their children. A threat to any colonist trying to walk past them to collect resources, but pretty amusing if a party of raiders got trampled by angry cow beasts.
Traveling Merchants and Beggars: It seems a bit odd that the only people you see on the planet are murderous raiders, or wandering travelers. Sometimes, traders would spawn on the edge of the map, and travel to your colony to offer goods. This could be a whole group of people, with perhaps a wagon of goods they carry with them. They go to your colony, and would act basically just like the merchant ships. Of course, since they're on the surface, you could try to kill them and steal all their resources, but you'd need to be careful, since they would likely arrive heavily guarded. To deal with issues for pathing, you would likely need to build a structure equivalent to your comms console for them to travel to. A Trading post, or something similar. Otherwise, they could possibly path towards whatever you've marked as your home region, as a way to designate the area as having arrived "at the base"
Alternately, sometime you might encounter lone travelers who ask for assistance from your colony. A single person spawns in the same way the wandering drifters do, except a notification pops up where they ask for a trade. These would be small, simple things, not the menus where you exchange resources like with traders. Basically the traveler says "Please help, my gun broke and I need a replacement. I'll give you [insert X amount of resource] for your [insert randomly selected gun your colony]" or "I need more food to safely reach my destination. I'll give you my weapon for [insert x amount of food]!" You can agree to the deal, or turn them down and send them on their way. You might be able to try and haggle with them, based on a social skill or something like that, and if you succeed you get a better deal, but if you fail they leave and you loose out on the trade. Or possibly even attack you, if they're desperate enough. To keep players from trying to get free stuff by just attacking the traveler, they shouldn't drop their offered resources when killed or arrested.
Wild Animal Famine: The local animal population has accidentally overeaten the wild grass and plants they normally eat, and have started to starve. A group of animals will attack your colony, though instead of attacking colonists like when they go mad, they'll charge in to try and get to your crop fields, where they'll eat every plant they can reach. They'll eat all the food from your fields, leaving them barren, and will try to get to any food stockpiles they can reach, even breaking down doors to try and get to them, clearing out stockpiles of raw food and prepared meals, and even breaking filled food hoppers or nutrient paste dispensers. Once they've eaten their fill they'll leave peacefully, but your colonists may starve if you don't try to fight them off. This COULD be very destructive for a colony, or nothing more than a minor hassle, depending on your level of food and defenses against hungry animals.
Escaping Prisoner/Slave: It seems odd that the only raiders you see in the game just appear from nowhere in the middle of your map to attack you. It'd make sense to me that there would be other bases scattered around the planet, and other raiders already planetside. Sometimes, a group of raiders would spawn on the edge of the map, along with one civilian they're chasing after. The civilian would likely be unarmed, and already injured to some degree, and would likely run towards your base, or the opposite side of the map. If you kill all the raiders chasing the running prisoner, they would be extremely likely to join your colony as thanks for saving them.
Dust storms: A heavy wind kicks up in the area and sends a huge cloud of dust into the air. While the dust storm is active, all humans (colonists AND raiders) would move slower, and their maximum range and accuracy would be reduced. After all, no one can aim or hit right when there's heavy wind and dust obscuring everything. Crops growing outside or in unsheltered locations would likely grow slower or have a chance of dying in these conditions, and any machines like turrets or solar panels may be damaged. Colonists will likely get negative thoughts from being outside in weather like this. Solar panels would either not work during the storm, or work with lowered efficiency.
Rain storms: Similar to the currently existing rain and lightning events, but much much more forceful. It would likely cause a similar slowness / visiblity debuff like the dust storm, but probably not as strongly. The rain is so strong that standing water would pool on the ground, causing huge risks of electrical damage, and possibly washing away whatever items were in the tile, knocking them around and generally making a huge mess to clean up, having to resort everything and forcing colonists to clean away the mud once the storm ends. Any plants that get flooded by water might die, but any that are growing outside would likely get a huge growth buff. There would be a lot more lightning strikes, causing a higher risk of fires, but since there's so much rain the flame likely wouldn't be able to spread as far. Long story short, a variant of the dust storm that likely causes more electrical problems, but at a chance of getting a LOT more food out of it. It would also be pretty nice if you could research and build lightning rods, to help protect yourself from the storms. Lightning would have a higher chance of hitting the rod instead of the ground, avoiding wild fires, and giving you a quick boost of power if it was attached to your power system.
Tornadoes: One of the rarer, but very dangerous events that could occur in the game. A tornado sweeps through the area, causing huge damage to whatever is in the way. Any plants would likely get uprooted, walls could get smashed down, and any structures would likely suffer heavy damage or be straight up destroyed. Items left laying outside would probably be sent scattered around the map or vanish entirely as they get sucked up, and any living creature would want to get out of there asap. The tornado could do anything from sending people and animals flying, either winding them or damaging them if they hit structures, or even killing them by smashing them into things or sending them flying into the air, with very low chances of survival. Hiding inside your tunneled bases would likely be the safest way to survive the tornado, as it couldn't hit anything protected under the thick rock roof of the mountainside.
A note on storms and tornadoes and such: These events, and any other weather-based events, it stands to reason that your colonists should be able to detect them. After all, storms don't just appear out of nowhere usually, do they? You see them on the horizon as they come in! If these are added to the game, I feel that a new tech should be added to research, called "Weather Prediction", which would give your colonists an advance warning when they occur. They would be rare, but very dangerous, so any preparations you could get would be good. Without the tech, the events would occur with no warning, or very little warning at least. But once unlocked, the alerts will change, instead you would get a message warning you of a coming storm/tornado several hours (in-game time, obviously) in advance, giving you time to prepare, and then a second warning when the event actually occurs.
Earthquakes: This one I'm more iffy on than some of the other ideas I've listed. This might be unpredictable, or you might be able to build some sort of seismometer to give you a warning in advance. When an earthquake occurs, the screen shakes violently for a few moments. Any of your tunnels built into the mountain would get filled with random patches of gravel and dust that need to be cleaned up, and there's a risk of stone rubble falling from the ceiling. The larger the space dug out, the higher the chance of debris falling, similar to the cave in system already in the game. Solid stone might fall that would need to be dug out again. Any buildings underneath falling debris would be broken, and any people hit would be knocked unconscious and hurt, if not straight up killed. Any player built walls would have a chance of collapsing from the shaking. I like the idea of tiles in the mountainside being broken, cracks opening up, but this would likely look pretty terrible given enough time and earthquakes occurring, so that part probably should be skipped over.
Meteor Shower: Because this is a sci-fi game, and no sci-fi setting is complete without meteors. Sometimes, meteor showers will occur, which are harmless, but give any colonists who are outside during the storm a minor happiness boost for getting to watch the shower occur. It'd be a cute touch if you could see faint lights flashing around on the ground during the night, to represent the meteors moving across the sky. These events likely wouldn't last long, but would give a small amount of happiness that could last a few days for getting to wish on a shooting star, or something similar. Absolutely no threat, and a nice way to get a bit of free happiness.
Meteor STRIKE!: I hope you didn't think that meteors were all fun and games and happy wishes! Hah! Because this is a sci-fi game, and no sci-fi setting is complete without meteors. And sometimes these meteors are angry and wish to ruin your day. These would be very very rare events, where a meteor was large enough to survive entry to the planet and smack into the ground. A large amount of rock debris would be scattered around the impact site, and the whole area would be set on fire. These could hit anywhere not shielded by thick rock walls, potentially smashing into any buildings constructed outside, or landing in the middle of the field. Obviously, any living thing in the impact site would be instantly killed, and likely would leave no corpse behind, incinerated in the impact. Left behind would be a large irregularly shaped ball of natural stone and ore walls. These may have a chance of having rarer minerals contained within them, like uranium, a valuable prize to collect once the fires and destruction have been cleared away.
Pleasant Weather: Sometimes, a day is just nicer than others. Sometimes, the weather around your colony will be especially nice, giving a constant happiness buff to everyone outside during the time. An especially nice and sunny day might make daylilies bloom better, or cause daylilies to randomly bloom out in the wild, where they would last for a few days before wilting, making your potted lilies give off a slightly stronger happiness buff, and helping make the entire area slightly prettier. These could last for anywhere from a day to a week or more.
Sometimes a nice refreshing and gentle rain would happen, not like the violent thunderstorms we sometimes get. Gentle nice rain would have a very low chance of causing electrical problems, and would give a minor boost to your outdoor crop growth, while giving some colonists happy thoughts for the refreshing rain (some colonists may in fact be turned off by this sort of weather, based on their personality, and get a small happiness loss for the duration of the rain). After the rain clears, you may even get a rainbow across the sky!
More events will be added as I think of them, and any of your ideas are welcome too. But what I would REALLY like to know is, is it possible to mod in new random events into the game by this point (Alpha 2)? I would love if someone could add in at least some of these events into the game if it was possible, I'd be willing to take a shot at it myself if I knew the first thing about modding XML for this game
More random events would really help liven things up after a while, either rare or dangerous disasters to shake things up, to really useful events that could help you or add new resources, to even just random things that help the world you're living on feel a bit more alive outside of your little square level area. Here are some of the events I've thought of so far:
Animal Migration: A group of animals (Probably muffalo) travel across the map during the course of their migration. This would act similar to the wandering traveler event, a group of animals spawn at one edge of the map, and travel towards another edge of the map and despawn. They might break down walls or machines in their path, or accidentally trample electrical wires underfoot. This could be very damaging to a colony if a distant field of solar panels is accidentally cut off or broken down by the muffalo, or it could mean nothing at all if they pass by without much harm, or it could even be a boon, providing a sudden increase in huntable animals for your colonists to eat if you're short on food.
Muffalo Breeding Season: Muffalo are normally pretty passive animals. They won't really bother you, even if you get right up next to them, and won't really fight even if you start shooting at them. This would change that temporarily. During the breeding season, the herd would draw close together and stay near each other. Baby muffalo would spawn in the area during this time, giving you extra animals to hunt eventually. But, any people who get too close to the herd during this time would be attacked by angry muffalo trying to protect their children. A threat to any colonist trying to walk past them to collect resources, but pretty amusing if a party of raiders got trampled by angry cow beasts.
Traveling Merchants and Beggars: It seems a bit odd that the only people you see on the planet are murderous raiders, or wandering travelers. Sometimes, traders would spawn on the edge of the map, and travel to your colony to offer goods. This could be a whole group of people, with perhaps a wagon of goods they carry with them. They go to your colony, and would act basically just like the merchant ships. Of course, since they're on the surface, you could try to kill them and steal all their resources, but you'd need to be careful, since they would likely arrive heavily guarded. To deal with issues for pathing, you would likely need to build a structure equivalent to your comms console for them to travel to. A Trading post, or something similar. Otherwise, they could possibly path towards whatever you've marked as your home region, as a way to designate the area as having arrived "at the base"
Alternately, sometime you might encounter lone travelers who ask for assistance from your colony. A single person spawns in the same way the wandering drifters do, except a notification pops up where they ask for a trade. These would be small, simple things, not the menus where you exchange resources like with traders. Basically the traveler says "Please help, my gun broke and I need a replacement. I'll give you [insert X amount of resource] for your [insert randomly selected gun your colony]" or "I need more food to safely reach my destination. I'll give you my weapon for [insert x amount of food]!" You can agree to the deal, or turn them down and send them on their way. You might be able to try and haggle with them, based on a social skill or something like that, and if you succeed you get a better deal, but if you fail they leave and you loose out on the trade. Or possibly even attack you, if they're desperate enough. To keep players from trying to get free stuff by just attacking the traveler, they shouldn't drop their offered resources when killed or arrested.
Wild Animal Famine: The local animal population has accidentally overeaten the wild grass and plants they normally eat, and have started to starve. A group of animals will attack your colony, though instead of attacking colonists like when they go mad, they'll charge in to try and get to your crop fields, where they'll eat every plant they can reach. They'll eat all the food from your fields, leaving them barren, and will try to get to any food stockpiles they can reach, even breaking down doors to try and get to them, clearing out stockpiles of raw food and prepared meals, and even breaking filled food hoppers or nutrient paste dispensers. Once they've eaten their fill they'll leave peacefully, but your colonists may starve if you don't try to fight them off. This COULD be very destructive for a colony, or nothing more than a minor hassle, depending on your level of food and defenses against hungry animals.
Escaping Prisoner/Slave: It seems odd that the only raiders you see in the game just appear from nowhere in the middle of your map to attack you. It'd make sense to me that there would be other bases scattered around the planet, and other raiders already planetside. Sometimes, a group of raiders would spawn on the edge of the map, along with one civilian they're chasing after. The civilian would likely be unarmed, and already injured to some degree, and would likely run towards your base, or the opposite side of the map. If you kill all the raiders chasing the running prisoner, they would be extremely likely to join your colony as thanks for saving them.
Dust storms: A heavy wind kicks up in the area and sends a huge cloud of dust into the air. While the dust storm is active, all humans (colonists AND raiders) would move slower, and their maximum range and accuracy would be reduced. After all, no one can aim or hit right when there's heavy wind and dust obscuring everything. Crops growing outside or in unsheltered locations would likely grow slower or have a chance of dying in these conditions, and any machines like turrets or solar panels may be damaged. Colonists will likely get negative thoughts from being outside in weather like this. Solar panels would either not work during the storm, or work with lowered efficiency.
Rain storms: Similar to the currently existing rain and lightning events, but much much more forceful. It would likely cause a similar slowness / visiblity debuff like the dust storm, but probably not as strongly. The rain is so strong that standing water would pool on the ground, causing huge risks of electrical damage, and possibly washing away whatever items were in the tile, knocking them around and generally making a huge mess to clean up, having to resort everything and forcing colonists to clean away the mud once the storm ends. Any plants that get flooded by water might die, but any that are growing outside would likely get a huge growth buff. There would be a lot more lightning strikes, causing a higher risk of fires, but since there's so much rain the flame likely wouldn't be able to spread as far. Long story short, a variant of the dust storm that likely causes more electrical problems, but at a chance of getting a LOT more food out of it. It would also be pretty nice if you could research and build lightning rods, to help protect yourself from the storms. Lightning would have a higher chance of hitting the rod instead of the ground, avoiding wild fires, and giving you a quick boost of power if it was attached to your power system.
Tornadoes: One of the rarer, but very dangerous events that could occur in the game. A tornado sweeps through the area, causing huge damage to whatever is in the way. Any plants would likely get uprooted, walls could get smashed down, and any structures would likely suffer heavy damage or be straight up destroyed. Items left laying outside would probably be sent scattered around the map or vanish entirely as they get sucked up, and any living creature would want to get out of there asap. The tornado could do anything from sending people and animals flying, either winding them or damaging them if they hit structures, or even killing them by smashing them into things or sending them flying into the air, with very low chances of survival. Hiding inside your tunneled bases would likely be the safest way to survive the tornado, as it couldn't hit anything protected under the thick rock roof of the mountainside.
A note on storms and tornadoes and such: These events, and any other weather-based events, it stands to reason that your colonists should be able to detect them. After all, storms don't just appear out of nowhere usually, do they? You see them on the horizon as they come in! If these are added to the game, I feel that a new tech should be added to research, called "Weather Prediction", which would give your colonists an advance warning when they occur. They would be rare, but very dangerous, so any preparations you could get would be good. Without the tech, the events would occur with no warning, or very little warning at least. But once unlocked, the alerts will change, instead you would get a message warning you of a coming storm/tornado several hours (in-game time, obviously) in advance, giving you time to prepare, and then a second warning when the event actually occurs.
Earthquakes: This one I'm more iffy on than some of the other ideas I've listed. This might be unpredictable, or you might be able to build some sort of seismometer to give you a warning in advance. When an earthquake occurs, the screen shakes violently for a few moments. Any of your tunnels built into the mountain would get filled with random patches of gravel and dust that need to be cleaned up, and there's a risk of stone rubble falling from the ceiling. The larger the space dug out, the higher the chance of debris falling, similar to the cave in system already in the game. Solid stone might fall that would need to be dug out again. Any buildings underneath falling debris would be broken, and any people hit would be knocked unconscious and hurt, if not straight up killed. Any player built walls would have a chance of collapsing from the shaking. I like the idea of tiles in the mountainside being broken, cracks opening up, but this would likely look pretty terrible given enough time and earthquakes occurring, so that part probably should be skipped over.
Meteor Shower: Because this is a sci-fi game, and no sci-fi setting is complete without meteors. Sometimes, meteor showers will occur, which are harmless, but give any colonists who are outside during the storm a minor happiness boost for getting to watch the shower occur. It'd be a cute touch if you could see faint lights flashing around on the ground during the night, to represent the meteors moving across the sky. These events likely wouldn't last long, but would give a small amount of happiness that could last a few days for getting to wish on a shooting star, or something similar. Absolutely no threat, and a nice way to get a bit of free happiness.
Meteor STRIKE!: I hope you didn't think that meteors were all fun and games and happy wishes! Hah! Because this is a sci-fi game, and no sci-fi setting is complete without meteors. And sometimes these meteors are angry and wish to ruin your day. These would be very very rare events, where a meteor was large enough to survive entry to the planet and smack into the ground. A large amount of rock debris would be scattered around the impact site, and the whole area would be set on fire. These could hit anywhere not shielded by thick rock walls, potentially smashing into any buildings constructed outside, or landing in the middle of the field. Obviously, any living thing in the impact site would be instantly killed, and likely would leave no corpse behind, incinerated in the impact. Left behind would be a large irregularly shaped ball of natural stone and ore walls. These may have a chance of having rarer minerals contained within them, like uranium, a valuable prize to collect once the fires and destruction have been cleared away.
Pleasant Weather: Sometimes, a day is just nicer than others. Sometimes, the weather around your colony will be especially nice, giving a constant happiness buff to everyone outside during the time. An especially nice and sunny day might make daylilies bloom better, or cause daylilies to randomly bloom out in the wild, where they would last for a few days before wilting, making your potted lilies give off a slightly stronger happiness buff, and helping make the entire area slightly prettier. These could last for anywhere from a day to a week or more.
Sometimes a nice refreshing and gentle rain would happen, not like the violent thunderstorms we sometimes get. Gentle nice rain would have a very low chance of causing electrical problems, and would give a minor boost to your outdoor crop growth, while giving some colonists happy thoughts for the refreshing rain (some colonists may in fact be turned off by this sort of weather, based on their personality, and get a small happiness loss for the duration of the rain). After the rain clears, you may even get a rainbow across the sky!
More events will be added as I think of them, and any of your ideas are welcome too. But what I would REALLY like to know is, is it possible to mod in new random events into the game by this point (Alpha 2)? I would love if someone could add in at least some of these events into the game if it was possible, I'd be willing to take a shot at it myself if I knew the first thing about modding XML for this game
4
Help / is it possible to add new random events?
« on: March 01, 2014, 07:24:04 PM »
Exactly what the title says. One of the issues of the game so far is that it feels like colonies will just eventually become and endless parade of raider after raider after raider with nothing much else to do besides fight off the occasional crazy animal and deal with electrical issues.
If there were more custom events added to the game, it would really help liven things up. But I have absolutely no clue how events work in the game, and if they're possible to modify. Things like new weather events, animal migrations, trader caravans, stuff like that. Add in a dozen or so new events, and the game would suddenly become MUCH more interesting. Anyone care to explain a bit on what could or couldn't be done to events?
If there were more custom events added to the game, it would really help liven things up. But I have absolutely no clue how events work in the game, and if they're possible to modify. Things like new weather events, animal migrations, trader caravans, stuff like that. Add in a dozen or so new events, and the game would suddenly become MUCH more interesting. Anyone care to explain a bit on what could or couldn't be done to events?
5
Ideas / Ousire's Big List o' Suggestions: Hauling, Storage, Liquids, Defenses, and More
« on: February 07, 2014, 06:30:26 AM »
Before starting this, I'd just like to say ahead of time that I'm sorry if any of my ideas have been brought up already; I saw some overlaps, but none quite in the way I've been imagining. I may have missed something though! I purchased the game about a week or so ago, maybe two, and I've been playing quite a deal, these are all the things I've come up with while doing my best to survive the waves of bandits and insanity. I'll start from the top, and I'll try to explain why and how I came up with each idea:
Hauling and Clearing:
While playing, I frequently found myself very annoyed by how long it can take to even clear a small area of all the rubble and resources and messes that build up in a base. Especially when we start with only three people, it takes forever to clear away all of the rubble, collect all the scattered resources, and sweep away all the messes. I figure if our characters are smart enough to make advanced machines like solar panels and paste dispensers, they better be smart enough to make some basic hauling equipment!
Baskets and/or Backpacks: These would be the most basic of hauling enhancements, available right off the bat (After all, these are about as low tech as you go). These would be cheap to construct, and either your characters would passively use them when they go hauling, or they would be equipable similar to weapons, and would provide whoever is using them with a small boost to their carrying capacity. Perhaps they would allow your characters to carry two pieces of rock/rubble/debris at once. I assume other resources and crafting ingredients will eventually be added to the game besides metals and potatos, so these would probably be made out of cloth or plant fiber
Wheelbarrows: These would be the next stage of hauling, and probably they would need to be researched, but they would offer much higher capacity than the baskets, possibly twice as high as a regular unassisted character. You'd need to craft these out of metal, but they'd greatly shorten the time it would take to finish hauling tasks. Depending on how in depth the storage and hauling system is in game, you might be able to assign wheelbarrows to be dedicated to specific stockpiles in the same way you can assign priority, so certain stockpiles get filled faster than others.
Vehicles: I know this one miiiight be a bit of an extreme idea, and I'm a bit iffy on the idea myself, but I imagine as a very VERY end game sort of technology. Obviously this would need to be researched, and it would probably have prerequisite researches before you could unlock it. Possibly, if you'd like it to be very rare, vehicles could be obtainable only from the occasional trader. It'd cost a LOT of resources to make a truck, but obviously you could carry a huge amount of stuff with one vehicle. As an added cost, a vehicle would probably require some sort of energy to run as well. Either use fuel if that gets added like I discuss later, or it'd be an electrical vehicle. It would need some sort of internal battery or fuel tank that would be charged up, and periodically refilled between runs of carrying things. Fuel efficiency might be a researchable upgrade.
Storage:
Before starting this section, I'd just like to clarify that I'm pretty sure that storage devices are already on the planned list of additions to the game or have been suggested before, but I had a few ideas that I felt should be brought up because they relate to some of my other ideas.
Pots or Jars: This is the same basic idea as baskets from my hauling idea, a basic and relatively easy to construct object that will allow additional storage capacity in a single tile. It would only increase storage by a small amount, but given how few things currently fit on a launch pad, every little bit helps. To help differentiate these from carrying baskets, they could only be moved while empty, so characters would be forced to empty the pot before putting in a new area
Barrels and Crates: An enhanced storage unit that would need to be researched before you could construct it. Barrels would be made of metal, and crates would be made of wood, assuming wood is added as a construction resource. Like the pots, you could only move a barrel once it's emptied, which would help encourage players to use baskets and wheelbarrows.
Portable power: While playing the game, I've learned the hard way that it's a bad bad idea to build your solar panels near to your base, because bandits love to take cover behind them if they're right near your front line defenses. Sadly, I've also discovered that the further away buildings are, the more of a pain it is to fix when your power lines get blown up. Because of this, I've also gotten in the habit of running two or three lines spaced apart for fail safes and I build small caches of batteries around my base. To help fix this problem, I think we need portable energy sources. Imagine something essentially the same thing as the current battery, but possibly with less storage capacity, and can be picked up and moved around by your characters.
You could build a charging station and plug one of these cells in, where it'd slowly soak up power just like a battery. Then, once it gets filled, your characters would unplug it and drop it off in a storage area. If you get an accidental power outage or a break in your power lines, your characters can carry a charged cell over to an empty charging station and plug it in, where it'd send power out into the system. In addition this would let you make "free" money over time, by storing your excess power in a cell and selling your electricity to trader ships, though it likely wouldn't be too valuable to keep it balanced
Refrigerators: I know there's only potatoes and paste in this game so far, but I know that fancier types of food are going to be added to the game eventually. I imagine the fridge as a type of specialty storage that can only hold food, but it could allow something for your cooks to keep food in so you can have a buffer of prepared meals. Currently the only way to have a buffer of food is to have a lot of hoppers attached to your dispensers, but with a fridge, your cooks could automatically create paste (And later better foods obviously) and store it in the fridge, where your other characters would have a preference for getting the food from over a dispenser.
This allows you to better differentiate between haulers moving food to the hoppers, and cooks "cooking" the delicious paste. The fridge might also have a low electrical draw, and I imagine it might also give a small extra happiness buff to encourage use, for 'eating well preserved food' or something similar.
Mass graves: The longer a base goes on, the more corpses of raiders and wild animals you inevitably accumulate over time. Of course, you CAN dig a grave for each and every one, but from what I've seen on the forum, everyone just ends up blowing up corpses with explosives and fire after a while. To me, this seems a bit like an exploit, but the problem is that digging a full graveyard takes forever since you need a grave for each body. An individual grave takes up a 1x2 tile and can hold one body, but a mass grave would occupy perhaps a 3x3 or 4x4 space but could hold more bodies per tile. This way, all your enemies and monsters get put into the mass graves (Or eaten when that gets added to the game, but I imagine a lot of people would be unhappy to eat raider corpses even if they are turned to paste!)
in reality, using fire or explosions on bodies would create lots of nasty smoke or piles of gore instead of neatly cleaning things away, and these both could be modeled in the game to discourage players from ignoring graves by creating more unhappy thoughts when people dispose of corpses in this method, or possibly making bodies decay and give off miasma over time like in Dwarf Fortress. For added challenge, another unhappy thought could be added if one of your own colonists gets put into the mass grave, because they got an improper burial. So you'd end with a small graveyard of your own fallen characters, and a larger graveyard of burial mounds of raiders and animals.
Liquids:
Another resource for your characters to collect, this could range anywhere from water on the map, to coolants for machinery, or oil and fuel. Certain machines might take fuel to run as well as electricity, or coolant could be used as a 'buff' to keep machines from malfunctioning as often.
Water: Imagine water as being collected and transported essentially the same way as electricity currently is. Your characters would need to drink water, or water would be required to make certain food recipes. You could build Atmospheric Collectors to slowly create water wherever you place them, and scattered around the map could be pools or lakes, which you can construct Pumps over to collect much larger amounts in one place. Water would need to be transported through pipes, and it would be stored in liquid tanks. These would basically be parallels to the electrical systems; solar panels and geothermals for generation, and cables and batteries for transport and storage. In the same way you could make portable power cells, you could construct portable water tanks to move liquid around the base or sell to traders.
Oil and fuel: It makes sense that some machines might require fuel to run. Around the maps you could find oil wells and spouts, which would be tapped into with pumps the same way water is. Once you get a supply of oil, you could eventually build a Refinery to convert it into fuel and other resources. The Refinery would probably need to be researched before you construct it, but fuel would be a very useful resource to have late game. In real life, oil and fuel can be turned into a lot of byproducts (Like plastic), so fuel production could be a very lucrative trade by selling it to traders for large amounts of cash. In return though, fuel would be expensive to purchase, which would keep people from too easily obtaining it early on for powerful machinery.
Defenses:
Lets all be honest here, pretty much everyone admits that turrets suck after a while because their range is too short, and that explosives kinda break the game. Obviously, we need some balancing for turrets and explosives, but besides that we need other options.
Land Mines: Obviously this is what people currently use mining charges for, but I think we should have a dedicated weaponized version. Once placed, these would automatically detonate once someone steps onto it. These could come in a few different varieties, which might need to be researched first. Something like a frag mine, which would have a higher chance of injuring people instead of killing them, or incendiary mines that would set fire to the area around them. You need to be careful with these though, in case your own characters set them off by mistake, or the local wildlife detonates one
Turret Upgrades: Personally, I'm not a fan of a simple direct upgrade for turrets. A system where you just have a turret, and a turret that costs more and is stronger feels way too simple and arbitrary. Sometimes I want to focus more on range over damage or vice versa, or other stats. So I propose a system of Modular Turret Upgrades. Instead of just having various turrets with different stats, these would be machines that would be constructed like any other building, and any turrets next to them would get a buff. This would allow you to make turrets that focus very specifically on the stats you want, would limit the number of upgrades you could have based on the area around a turret, and would also give you extra motivation to protect your turrets, because if they explode, they'd obviously take out any upgrades next to them.
For an example, imagine a regular turret surrounded with range booster upgrades. This would make a very long range turret, something like a sniper and good for getting the first hit in. But once enemies clear the ground and get into shooting range, you won't need that long of a range. So another turret could have boosts to increase their damage, or make them shoot faster or the like. There could be anything from increasing their range or damage, to modules that would increase their maximum health or defense, or even make them slowly auto repair over time. Obviously they'd require research, a good amount of resources, and draw extra electricity.
Of course, there could also still be specialty turrets you could build, things like flamethrowers or laser turrets or rocket launchers. But I feel like this would give players a loooot of specialty control, though I understand this might be a pain to code. Long story short, each module would act like a buff to whatever turrets are adjacent to them.
Weapon Holsters: My own base defense amounts to lining up all my characters behind barricades and opening fire whenever people get in range, but I've found that this pretty much means all I do is equip all the longest range guns and never use any other items. When raiders get closer to my base and start bunching up by my barricades, I usually would like to start throwing grenades at them, but I never have time to run someone to equip explosives and back, and I never bother to keep someone with grenades because they have such close range. If you give people weapon holsters though, a character could equip two weapons at once.
To keep things simple, characters would automatically just use whatever weapon is in slot one, but you can order them to use their secondary weapon. This way, you can keep your defense crew using longer range weapons, but then switch over to grenades and other short range things when the time is right. This would encourage players to stockpile and experiment with a wider array of weapons. This would be especially useful once melee weapons are added to the game, so you could have a slot for a melee weapon and a slot for ranged.
Firing Range and Dummies: Currently there is no dedicated way to train your shooting skill, so all you can do is order people to shoot at random bits or prisoners. If you build a firing range, people can use it to shoot at targets to increase their stats, possibly a bit faster than shooting at random stuff. As far as I know, there isn't ANY way to train melee fighting, so constructing a combat dummy would give your colonists something to smack.
These both could also be used to increase your fear rating as well, by using live prisoners for targets. By selecting a prisoner you could order them to be tied to the targets or dummies and they'd be left for people to train on, giving a fear boost to anyone nearby. Once the prisoners die from exposure or damage, they'd get disposed of like a normal corpse
Spiked Barricades or Razor Wire: Sand bag walls don't seem to do a good enough of keeping bandits away from your base, once they get into close enough range they just climb right over the walls. By researching and building these walls, it'd give you some better defenses. Of course, your own characters wouldn't run over these walls, but raiders would move much slower over these versus sand bags and would take damage from contacting them.
Nonlethal Defenses: Sometimes you want to "collect" some new members for your colony, but those darn raiders are so rude, dying instead of getting injured like you want. You should be able to collect nonlethal weapons, things like tasers or tranq guns to take people out at range without killing them, or have your colonists dig a pitfall trap to catch people. A pitfall would act a bit like a land mine, triggering when a raider walks onto it and dropping them into the hole. They wouldn't be very injured, so they could probably still fight back, but you could still flag them for capture and imprisonment inside a pit. They might also be able to climb out of the hole over time, or other raiders might try to fish them back out.
I know this is a lot of stuff to bring up in one post, but I feel like these would add a lot of depth and challenge to the game, along with just being practical in some cases. I tried to avoid bringing up any specific numbers for how much things might boost stats or weight, to avoid issues of it being balanced or not, but I'm curious what you guys think for specific details.
Hauling and Clearing:
While playing, I frequently found myself very annoyed by how long it can take to even clear a small area of all the rubble and resources and messes that build up in a base. Especially when we start with only three people, it takes forever to clear away all of the rubble, collect all the scattered resources, and sweep away all the messes. I figure if our characters are smart enough to make advanced machines like solar panels and paste dispensers, they better be smart enough to make some basic hauling equipment!
Baskets and/or Backpacks: These would be the most basic of hauling enhancements, available right off the bat (After all, these are about as low tech as you go). These would be cheap to construct, and either your characters would passively use them when they go hauling, or they would be equipable similar to weapons, and would provide whoever is using them with a small boost to their carrying capacity. Perhaps they would allow your characters to carry two pieces of rock/rubble/debris at once. I assume other resources and crafting ingredients will eventually be added to the game besides metals and potatos, so these would probably be made out of cloth or plant fiber
Wheelbarrows: These would be the next stage of hauling, and probably they would need to be researched, but they would offer much higher capacity than the baskets, possibly twice as high as a regular unassisted character. You'd need to craft these out of metal, but they'd greatly shorten the time it would take to finish hauling tasks. Depending on how in depth the storage and hauling system is in game, you might be able to assign wheelbarrows to be dedicated to specific stockpiles in the same way you can assign priority, so certain stockpiles get filled faster than others.
Vehicles: I know this one miiiight be a bit of an extreme idea, and I'm a bit iffy on the idea myself, but I imagine as a very VERY end game sort of technology. Obviously this would need to be researched, and it would probably have prerequisite researches before you could unlock it. Possibly, if you'd like it to be very rare, vehicles could be obtainable only from the occasional trader. It'd cost a LOT of resources to make a truck, but obviously you could carry a huge amount of stuff with one vehicle. As an added cost, a vehicle would probably require some sort of energy to run as well. Either use fuel if that gets added like I discuss later, or it'd be an electrical vehicle. It would need some sort of internal battery or fuel tank that would be charged up, and periodically refilled between runs of carrying things. Fuel efficiency might be a researchable upgrade.
Storage:
Before starting this section, I'd just like to clarify that I'm pretty sure that storage devices are already on the planned list of additions to the game or have been suggested before, but I had a few ideas that I felt should be brought up because they relate to some of my other ideas.
Pots or Jars: This is the same basic idea as baskets from my hauling idea, a basic and relatively easy to construct object that will allow additional storage capacity in a single tile. It would only increase storage by a small amount, but given how few things currently fit on a launch pad, every little bit helps. To help differentiate these from carrying baskets, they could only be moved while empty, so characters would be forced to empty the pot before putting in a new area
Barrels and Crates: An enhanced storage unit that would need to be researched before you could construct it. Barrels would be made of metal, and crates would be made of wood, assuming wood is added as a construction resource. Like the pots, you could only move a barrel once it's emptied, which would help encourage players to use baskets and wheelbarrows.
Portable power: While playing the game, I've learned the hard way that it's a bad bad idea to build your solar panels near to your base, because bandits love to take cover behind them if they're right near your front line defenses. Sadly, I've also discovered that the further away buildings are, the more of a pain it is to fix when your power lines get blown up. Because of this, I've also gotten in the habit of running two or three lines spaced apart for fail safes and I build small caches of batteries around my base. To help fix this problem, I think we need portable energy sources. Imagine something essentially the same thing as the current battery, but possibly with less storage capacity, and can be picked up and moved around by your characters.
You could build a charging station and plug one of these cells in, where it'd slowly soak up power just like a battery. Then, once it gets filled, your characters would unplug it and drop it off in a storage area. If you get an accidental power outage or a break in your power lines, your characters can carry a charged cell over to an empty charging station and plug it in, where it'd send power out into the system. In addition this would let you make "free" money over time, by storing your excess power in a cell and selling your electricity to trader ships, though it likely wouldn't be too valuable to keep it balanced
Refrigerators: I know there's only potatoes and paste in this game so far, but I know that fancier types of food are going to be added to the game eventually. I imagine the fridge as a type of specialty storage that can only hold food, but it could allow something for your cooks to keep food in so you can have a buffer of prepared meals. Currently the only way to have a buffer of food is to have a lot of hoppers attached to your dispensers, but with a fridge, your cooks could automatically create paste (And later better foods obviously) and store it in the fridge, where your other characters would have a preference for getting the food from over a dispenser.
This allows you to better differentiate between haulers moving food to the hoppers, and cooks "cooking" the delicious paste. The fridge might also have a low electrical draw, and I imagine it might also give a small extra happiness buff to encourage use, for 'eating well preserved food' or something similar.
Mass graves: The longer a base goes on, the more corpses of raiders and wild animals you inevitably accumulate over time. Of course, you CAN dig a grave for each and every one, but from what I've seen on the forum, everyone just ends up blowing up corpses with explosives and fire after a while. To me, this seems a bit like an exploit, but the problem is that digging a full graveyard takes forever since you need a grave for each body. An individual grave takes up a 1x2 tile and can hold one body, but a mass grave would occupy perhaps a 3x3 or 4x4 space but could hold more bodies per tile. This way, all your enemies and monsters get put into the mass graves (Or eaten when that gets added to the game, but I imagine a lot of people would be unhappy to eat raider corpses even if they are turned to paste!)
in reality, using fire or explosions on bodies would create lots of nasty smoke or piles of gore instead of neatly cleaning things away, and these both could be modeled in the game to discourage players from ignoring graves by creating more unhappy thoughts when people dispose of corpses in this method, or possibly making bodies decay and give off miasma over time like in Dwarf Fortress. For added challenge, another unhappy thought could be added if one of your own colonists gets put into the mass grave, because they got an improper burial. So you'd end with a small graveyard of your own fallen characters, and a larger graveyard of burial mounds of raiders and animals.
Liquids:
Another resource for your characters to collect, this could range anywhere from water on the map, to coolants for machinery, or oil and fuel. Certain machines might take fuel to run as well as electricity, or coolant could be used as a 'buff' to keep machines from malfunctioning as often.
Water: Imagine water as being collected and transported essentially the same way as electricity currently is. Your characters would need to drink water, or water would be required to make certain food recipes. You could build Atmospheric Collectors to slowly create water wherever you place them, and scattered around the map could be pools or lakes, which you can construct Pumps over to collect much larger amounts in one place. Water would need to be transported through pipes, and it would be stored in liquid tanks. These would basically be parallels to the electrical systems; solar panels and geothermals for generation, and cables and batteries for transport and storage. In the same way you could make portable power cells, you could construct portable water tanks to move liquid around the base or sell to traders.
Oil and fuel: It makes sense that some machines might require fuel to run. Around the maps you could find oil wells and spouts, which would be tapped into with pumps the same way water is. Once you get a supply of oil, you could eventually build a Refinery to convert it into fuel and other resources. The Refinery would probably need to be researched before you construct it, but fuel would be a very useful resource to have late game. In real life, oil and fuel can be turned into a lot of byproducts (Like plastic), so fuel production could be a very lucrative trade by selling it to traders for large amounts of cash. In return though, fuel would be expensive to purchase, which would keep people from too easily obtaining it early on for powerful machinery.
Defenses:
Lets all be honest here, pretty much everyone admits that turrets suck after a while because their range is too short, and that explosives kinda break the game. Obviously, we need some balancing for turrets and explosives, but besides that we need other options.
Land Mines: Obviously this is what people currently use mining charges for, but I think we should have a dedicated weaponized version. Once placed, these would automatically detonate once someone steps onto it. These could come in a few different varieties, which might need to be researched first. Something like a frag mine, which would have a higher chance of injuring people instead of killing them, or incendiary mines that would set fire to the area around them. You need to be careful with these though, in case your own characters set them off by mistake, or the local wildlife detonates one
Turret Upgrades: Personally, I'm not a fan of a simple direct upgrade for turrets. A system where you just have a turret, and a turret that costs more and is stronger feels way too simple and arbitrary. Sometimes I want to focus more on range over damage or vice versa, or other stats. So I propose a system of Modular Turret Upgrades. Instead of just having various turrets with different stats, these would be machines that would be constructed like any other building, and any turrets next to them would get a buff. This would allow you to make turrets that focus very specifically on the stats you want, would limit the number of upgrades you could have based on the area around a turret, and would also give you extra motivation to protect your turrets, because if they explode, they'd obviously take out any upgrades next to them.
For an example, imagine a regular turret surrounded with range booster upgrades. This would make a very long range turret, something like a sniper and good for getting the first hit in. But once enemies clear the ground and get into shooting range, you won't need that long of a range. So another turret could have boosts to increase their damage, or make them shoot faster or the like. There could be anything from increasing their range or damage, to modules that would increase their maximum health or defense, or even make them slowly auto repair over time. Obviously they'd require research, a good amount of resources, and draw extra electricity.
Of course, there could also still be specialty turrets you could build, things like flamethrowers or laser turrets or rocket launchers. But I feel like this would give players a loooot of specialty control, though I understand this might be a pain to code. Long story short, each module would act like a buff to whatever turrets are adjacent to them.
Weapon Holsters: My own base defense amounts to lining up all my characters behind barricades and opening fire whenever people get in range, but I've found that this pretty much means all I do is equip all the longest range guns and never use any other items. When raiders get closer to my base and start bunching up by my barricades, I usually would like to start throwing grenades at them, but I never have time to run someone to equip explosives and back, and I never bother to keep someone with grenades because they have such close range. If you give people weapon holsters though, a character could equip two weapons at once.
To keep things simple, characters would automatically just use whatever weapon is in slot one, but you can order them to use their secondary weapon. This way, you can keep your defense crew using longer range weapons, but then switch over to grenades and other short range things when the time is right. This would encourage players to stockpile and experiment with a wider array of weapons. This would be especially useful once melee weapons are added to the game, so you could have a slot for a melee weapon and a slot for ranged.
Firing Range and Dummies: Currently there is no dedicated way to train your shooting skill, so all you can do is order people to shoot at random bits or prisoners. If you build a firing range, people can use it to shoot at targets to increase their stats, possibly a bit faster than shooting at random stuff. As far as I know, there isn't ANY way to train melee fighting, so constructing a combat dummy would give your colonists something to smack.
These both could also be used to increase your fear rating as well, by using live prisoners for targets. By selecting a prisoner you could order them to be tied to the targets or dummies and they'd be left for people to train on, giving a fear boost to anyone nearby. Once the prisoners die from exposure or damage, they'd get disposed of like a normal corpse
Spiked Barricades or Razor Wire: Sand bag walls don't seem to do a good enough of keeping bandits away from your base, once they get into close enough range they just climb right over the walls. By researching and building these walls, it'd give you some better defenses. Of course, your own characters wouldn't run over these walls, but raiders would move much slower over these versus sand bags and would take damage from contacting them.
Nonlethal Defenses: Sometimes you want to "collect" some new members for your colony, but those darn raiders are so rude, dying instead of getting injured like you want. You should be able to collect nonlethal weapons, things like tasers or tranq guns to take people out at range without killing them, or have your colonists dig a pitfall trap to catch people. A pitfall would act a bit like a land mine, triggering when a raider walks onto it and dropping them into the hole. They wouldn't be very injured, so they could probably still fight back, but you could still flag them for capture and imprisonment inside a pit. They might also be able to climb out of the hole over time, or other raiders might try to fish them back out.
I know this is a lot of stuff to bring up in one post, but I feel like these would add a lot of depth and challenge to the game, along with just being practical in some cases. I tried to avoid bringing up any specific numbers for how much things might boost stats or weight, to avoid issues of it being balanced or not, but I'm curious what you guys think for specific details.
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