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fine

Well he asked why I thought his idea would be frustrating for the player, so I answered.

If nobody needs more than 10, why build a system that allows for that many? May as well just stick with a simple 4 coloured conduit system, each with noticeably different colours of red, green, blue, and yellow, that requires no thinking about how it's going to connect when being placed, and that is very easily customizable?

In the event you needed more than four, all you'd have to do is make sure that a grid isn't close to another like-coloured grid and you're okay.

And I see what you're saying about turrets, but it's a pain in the ass to turn them all on/off one by one, especially if they're needed immediately. It would be so much easier to just turn on a battery or two and send power to every turret.

Tynan please no. Blights already run rampant for me. I've literally had 4 blights in a row before, and every time I had nearly recovered, it all got wiped out again. Cassandra starved my colonists. she is a cold-hearted bitch.

Well, from a programming standpoint, you need to be able to sustain a potentially infinite number of separate conduits, and you'd eventually run out of different colours to use.

From a usage standpoint, it wouldn't be great either, unless a conduit became "connected" when it was placed, versus when it's built. And let's say you have a 'yellow' power source somewhere, and you need to run a yellow wire to what you're powering, but the only way to connect it crosses over a 'blue' connection. How does the game know which one you're trying to connect? You may end up with that item on the blue network, which may not work for what you want to do with it (example: yellow network is defenses and you keep it shut down unless needed)

Giving the player full control simply makes sense. Maybe make it a research goal so the player understands the concept of conduits before giving them access to different grids. the other colours could even be hidden behind a single button to avoid cluttering up the interface.

In fact, improving on my previous idea, instead of having a menu for power colour, instead just place a piece of coloured conduit on top of something that receives or carries electricity. No metal cost, no need to build, it simply changes the colour, allowing you to fully customize grids later on.

I can see that becoming very frustrating to use, especially if you're trying to connect things a certain way.

A fairly simple concept, which came to mind in the thread about fortress-like walls. StormKiko mentioned that he likes to keep different buildings on different power grids. What if we added a system to actually control this?

First, we would have maybe 3 or 4 different power conduits. Functionally, they are the same, but they don't connect to other coloured wires.

to take it a step further, you could change the 'colour' of walls and buildings. For example, if you have a 3x2 block of solar panels, and you want one of them to power a specific building and nothing else, you would change its preferences to only send power to the yellow grid, then lay down a yellow wire leading to the building. Change the building's walls to yellow, then the furniture and batteries inside to yellow, and boom, you have a building that is on a separate power grid without being clearly disconnected from everything else, also allowing you to run different wires past the building without worrying about connecting a big power grid.

Started tossing this idea around my head, and I feel it would definitely add to the game.

So, the leader duty. First of all, only one person can have the leader duty.it would be a checkbox, regardless of which priority mode you've set your colony to, and it encompasses all duties. Basically, the Leader has every priority set to 1, turning them into a kind of jack-of-all-trades.

Some requirements for assigning a leader would be:
- Colonist may only have 1 skill they are incapable of. After all, a leader must lead by example.
- The incapable skill must not be Social
- The leader must always be armed, unless their Melee skill is high.
- The leader's current loyalty must be a certain amount above the loyalty threshold to be assigned the duty.

So what does the leader do exactly? Pretty much everything. Their primary function to to give hope, inspiration, and motivation to other colonists. Say a colonist walks in on the Leader cleaning a particularly dirty area, that colonist may gain a small happiness bonus knowing that the leader is doing everything they can to ensure survival. Or perhaps the leader assists in digging a new tunnel, or in planting a new field with another colonist. That colonist would gain a larger happiness bonus  from working with the leader.

The leader has some duty-specific abilities, too. The biggest one to me, which inspired this entire duty, is the ability to talk to and calm down colonists in danger of mental break. The leader would take the colonist to one of the nicest rooms, and just sit down and talk them out of their madness, which is why Social cannot be incapable. Another idea I was playing around with would be talking to raiders to try and prevent an attack. I'm not sure how this would work exactly, but it would be dangerous, as if the raiders decided to attack, the leader would likely get killed or captured. However, you may also gain a large group of new colonists.

The leader would also be the kind of representation of you within the game, basically the person calling the shots. colonists would bring their concerns to him, and would be a way to integrate those magical messages that simply tell you what's wrong. Instead, a colonist could talk to the leader, maybe a dialogue box with a picture would open, and say something along the lines of "I'm concerned about our lack of defenses, we should build an auto-turret and some sandbags."

Anyways, that's all I've got for now. Let me know what you think.

I feel that having no effect on happiness makes sense. So let's say a raider manages to kill a colonist, but is later recruited. Sure, people would be angry that they lost a friend, but they'd also be grateful that there was someone who was more or less willing to fill the spot and work just as hard as everybody else to survive.

I like this idea. Maybe after a certain point, the game zooms out a bit and you're given a larger picture of what's going on, kind of like spore. You go from the current game of managing individual people, to maybe a kind of sim-city kind of game where you micromanage less things such as mining individual blocks and furnishing rooms, and focus on bigger things like building said rooms and exploring an expanded map.

Currently, miner happiness doesn't make much sense to me. If they're a miner, then they KNOW what they'll be doing. Yes, you're going to be in cramped quarters, yes it's going to be ugly, yes it's going to be dark, and yes you're probably going to be alone. Too often do I have that little alert that's telling me my miner is about to break down. What I suggest, and this could be a nice "cheap" addition, is something along the lines of "appropriate work" that adds to happiness. A miner is mining away, and he's happy doing it. An oaf is managing the fields, and is loving every second of it. A settler is building, and he whistles while he does it. On the flip side, we could also have inappropriate work. For example, Oafs would be used to wide open spaces and light and fields, and maybe they'd be incredibly unhappy down in the mines or in a cramped hydroponics lab. Maybe a miner can't stand bright lights and doesn't really enjoy going outside.

For another suggestion, maybe researchable mining helmets that are automatically equipped to everyone who is tasked on mining, but maybe miners get a happiness boost from using them, whereas everyone else only get the removal of darkness.