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Does anyone have tests or a good reference for exactly how temperature equalization is accomplished? The latest changelog says that equalization takes place mainly between walls now. I also would have sworn that the changelog said that double walls also provide additional insulation, but I can't seem to find that anywhere right now. Does anyone remember seeing this? What are the exact effects - is the equalization linear to how thick the walls are?

How exactly is the equalization calculated? Does every exposed wall section contribute to temperature equalization, or is it just summed up somehow per room? Regarding the double wall, if there are a few areas where the wall is only one section does that just have a proportional effect, or does it mean the whole wall is considered single for calculation purposes? Do doorways count as a single wall section? How are diagonals and room corners handled?

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How about rooms inside mountains? Do they equalize with the outside? The rest of the mountain?

0.5.492 rev33723

I was conflicted, but I stopped short of calling this a bug and placing in Mantis; I'm treating it more like a feature request for now (feel free to move around as necessary).

Along the lines of some recent threads (one and two) it can a bit cumbersome to keep non-drafted colonists out of harms way during battles. I noticed yesterday that metal from a destroyed enemy mortar draws out hauling colonists who walk unarmed directly into the enemy siege camp trying to retrieve the metal. This obviously leads to some problems. The player must notice this situation and mark the metal accordingly.

Requesting small change to have any object like this in the enemy camp default to forbidden. The player can then choose to remove the forbidden designation once the coast is clear.

Note that setting the enemy mortar to forbidden before being destroyed had no effect.

What is everyone's thoughts on buying slaves for the colony? I was personally surprised that a newly bought slave from a slave trader becomes an immediate member of the colony. Wouldn't it make more sense for them to enter the colony as a prisoner first? The player can choose to take care of them and convert them like any other prisoner, and I'd assume their conversion difficulty would be relatively low. In addition they can arrive in restraints to the orbital trade beacon like other traded merchandise (that sounds so wrong) instead of just appearing in the colony like they've always been there.

I suppose you could argue that they're happy and ready to work since you just saved them from being aboard a slave ship, but there does seem like there should still be some transition into the colony.

Now that mortars & sieges have made an appearance in Alpha-5, what about forward observers to go with them? A search yielded only this result, but it's a very old thread in the context of air support, so I figured a new thread was best.

The whole idea of indirect fire (even in modern warfare) is to hit a target you don't have direct line of sight on. But how do you know where to shoot? The answer is usually a forward observer that:

• Reports the position of the target.
• Reports the hit locations relative to the target from a few initial shots.
• Reports when the initial shots have bracketed the target (a hit behind and in front for example).
• Recommends all mortars "fire for effect," which means they all fire at the same time to the same place. The accuracy is greatly improved because a few mortar rounds have been spend adjusting the exact firing angle and solution (calculated trial and error).
  
• Continues to provide feedback to the crews on the outcome of their shots.

Seems like the current accuracy of the mortar makes sense without a forward observer, and probably doesn't need to change. The player's colony and the attackers have a relative idea of where one another is, and start lobbing shells randomly. But what if a colonist can be turned into a forward observer to greatly improve accuracy against a specific area? This would open up a new layer of strategy, and be another reason to send out some recon colonists.

I would think drafting a colonist as a FO would enable them to designate a target within their FO sight radius. As long as they're present, mortar rounds should become increasingly accurate over time. While the "fire for effect" would be neat, it wouldn't be necessary for the initial implementation (or at all).

I suppose the enemy could do the same, but then again, I'm not sure they need to be much more accurate. The players' bases are usually large enough that most shots will hit something.

I've been trying to observe combat to more detail, and have some questions I couldn't find discussion on by searching. I tried a few setups but can't seem to observe anything conclusive. The wiki article on this is a nice start, but I'll looking for some more information regarding cover that colonists can fire over.

• Does the cover effect stack? If a bullet travels over multiple sandbags, does each add to the likelihood of the bullet missing its target? Do they provide diminished returns (non-linear progression of protection for every covering object in the flight path of the bullet)?
• Does a colonist need to be standing next to cover in order to receive the bonus? If there's a sandbag between a bullet and a colonist is cover achieved if the bullet crosses the sandbag (regardless of the position of the colonist behind it) or does the colonist need to be directly behind it?

These questions are posed in the context of the game. In real-life, your distance to the cover would most certainly matter (closer the better to minimize your target silhouette), but the cover wouldn't really stack (just talking straight flying bullets right now - no explosives or lobbed grenades).

The same could apply to other objects as well, such as turrets. Do sandbags need to be right up against the turret (adjacent tiles), or can they be a tile or two in front? Does it make any sense to have a few layers of sandbags around the turret?

[I'd like to have a dedicated skill matrix screen where the player can see all the colonists listed in rows, with all their skills levels in subsequent columns.]

I did some searching, but didn't see anything very related. The following are UI suggestions:

I'd like to have a dedicated skill matrix screen where the player can see all the colonists listed in rows, with all their skills levels in subsequent columns. Ideally the skill numbers in each matrix position would also include the flame icons and any other pertinent information that the player can get from querying individual colonists. This would allow the player to quickly find the best colonist for the job.

A skill matrix sort of exists already on the priority screen, though the information is not the same one-for-one (i.e. there's no guns or melee skill on the priority screen). The boxes on the priority screen are different shades to indicate the strengths of the colonists as of Alpha-4f. The player must hover their mouse over the box for the exact number which is a rollup of several skills. I'd see this expanded further to include a UI control to show the actual numbers and introduce a colored shading scale so it's even more obvious where strengths are.

We also need presets or crisis configurations on the priority screen as well. There's been a few times already where I have all the priorities set nicely but a situation comes up where I need every colonist to drop what they're doing and plant or build etc. I can click the various boxes and make that happen, but it's tedious and slow. I know the game is paused on this screen, but it still takes the player a good amount of real-time to click lots of boxes. It would be nice to have some select all/deselect all controls by column and row.

In addition, after I have this temporary configuration set up, and the necessary work completed, now I have to put all the priorities back how I had it, assuming I remember. It would be nice to save and recall configurations of priority. Personally I would also have a default configuration saved, and I'd be much more inclined to make temporary changes if I could always quickly go back to a saved configuration.