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Morning!

I posted this a year ago, but since we're heading in the general direction now, I'll recap the idea.

How about a room and door type that visitors can utilize?
We could put in beds, tables, food and drinks for them, like an old western bar. Shelves would hold the items thought for visitors and could be disabled for colonist consumption (colonists only restock them).
Building on that, maybe crafting music instruments for artists to use could lead to a small stage for occasional performances even. Just like a party spot.
Of course, colonists would use the facilities too to some extend, to meet the travelers.
However, if you took good care of visitors, they could build friendships, even give you positive faction relation bonuses. If you severely impress them, someone of their group could decide to join up with you without angering the faction or needing to be arrested. Perhaps if they found a good friend, family member or lover in your colony, it could persuade them to stay more easily.
Those public buildings could also be a rally point for them during an attack if they are too outmatched.

I think the mechanics are all there at this point, just a matter of combining them.

Cheers,
Chris

Hello!

I thought a whole lot about it and this is what I've come up with..

Why don't the colonists get 2 handheld item slots?
They would be conditional and called left hand and right hand.
(Sidenote: Ambidextrous trait, default hand when picking up weapons, later.)

Now, say I want to equip a stage 1 guy..
Bow - would use both hands (disabling non-default slot)
Spear - dito
Longsword - would use default hand
..leaving other hand for e.g. a wooden/steel shield (I envision a small round buckler and a greatshield like the knights used - or the wooden variant, viking - and a tower shield like the romans used - or for wooden tower shields, the Zulu variant)

Stage 2 guy
LMG - both hands (disable nondefault slot)
Pistol - default hand
..leaving the other hand for other items, like a steel riot shield (values see tower shield, just looks more modern with a window) or a fire extinguisher (spray thingie, one-time use throwaway, researched together with the foam popper) OR a one-handed melee weapon.

Now, one-handed melee weapon in secondary hand? Yep. They would be less effective, but you could finally give your hunters both weapon types, and they would automatically default to ranged weapons (default hand), checking the nondefault hand for useable stuff as soon as they got anything in melee range (shield, knife, fire extinguisher). It would be slightly less effective there, but a lot better than your fists.

Also I would like to see a baton for stage 2 people, with a higher chance to KO than kill your opponent - nondefault hand wielded, this could enable your soldiers to be given the order to charge forward and capture someone using the melee order, effectively telling them to not use their guns but still get that guy down. This could be very helpful to deal with berserk own colonists as well. Knock out to calm down without cutting their limbs off and making them useless later.

Refined, this would result in lefthanded, righthanded characteristics and a rare ambidextrous trait, which eliminates the nondefault-hand-penalty for that character, making them ideal hunters or riot police officers.

Of course if a colonists lacks an arm, he would only have the other slot active, maybe resulting in a penalty for weapons use if it is his untrained arm and not allowing him to use a bow, LMG or other two handed weapon at all.

So, what do you say?

PS: Water bucket. Made of wood. For stage 1 firefighting.

Cheers,
Chris

Morning!

Today's find: Corn.

It is not affected by [Blight] and cannot be grown in hydroponics.

Fix: It should.

Cheers,
Chris

Hello,

noticed this on my newest playthrough.

I built Hydroponics buildings since my colony has a rather short growing period.
Even with Phoebe on Free, the frequent solar flares, the enormous power demand of a single sun bulb (1200W), the blights etc put together mean that the hydroponics basins oftentimes will be shut down (solar flare/power problems).
Since stuff planted in them dies after a few hours without power already, a single blackout means losing your crops.
All in all they die so often, it is much more viable for me to just not use hydroponics basins and instead box in a bit of soil with walls and a roof and a sun lamp. Those plants in real earth live through all of the "disasters" but a blight.

Maybe hydroponics basins and sun lamps need rebalancing?
Especially if you keep in mind 1 power plant can only power 1 lamp and a few basins. Most maps let you build 4-5 power plants only, the rest of your energy is unreliable (wind/sun dependant) and not suited for plants.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vkqbvvzv8kio0de/rw-hydro.jpg?dl=0

Left building works through eclipses, solar flares, blackouts, "Zzzt"s, etc. without a single plant keeling over. They just dont grow further for a while.
Right building barely ever gets plants to harvest, maybe once per year. Flip the switch and they die within seconds.

Here is an idea for a fix:

What if.. Hydroponics basins used as much power as the heater you see in both rooms, and provided "just the right heat" for only the plants, so that the right building would not require a heater or air condition anymore, and the plants were kept temperated through the basin?
This would mean that once power cuts out on a basin, the plants would rely on the room temperature around them and possibly freeze to death.
If however the room is kept warm - say, because its waaay inside a mountain or still has heater/air cooling in place and the temperature has to drop first - they wouldn't die from blackouts as instantly as before, surviving them if you planned ahead a bit.

Unpowered hydroponics basins could behave much like standard plant pots outside. Powered ones would regulate the heat around the plants to be optimal and have better soil inside because of the automated systems keeping them watered.
The sun lamp, with a little less power need (most power hungry item ingame, compares to 6 comm stations or 6 incinerators.. sense?) would be the replacement for the sunlight still, and on a blackout the plants would behave like their surrounding light dictates, and rely on the room temperature for growth percentage influence.

Fixed powered basin + sunlamp conditions:
rich soil, brightly lit, ideal temperature for the plant, letting it grow a bit faster than on a good field outside
Totalling about 1000W for an entire hydroponics room with one lamp and about 6-8 basins.

Fixed powered basin + normal lamp conditions:
soil, room's lighting status, ideal temperature for the plants, about as effective as a normal field outside

Fixed unpowered basin + real sunlight conditions:
dirt, room's lighting status, room's temperature, as effective as a normal plant pot outside

I think this would make hydroponics work efficient enough to survive a blackout on a summer day, while allowing thought-through in-mountain designs for the uber fancy gardeners to really make them efficient for big colonies in any conditions.

Cheers,
Chris

With 0.8 now being in a good shape, I'd like to remind of these items, as well as add a few new thoughts.

Permanent Campfire
- Once a campfire burns down, it is gone. How about adding a toggle option, defaulting to off, that allows you to tell your people to refill this one with wood? Would look so much nicer.

Colorful Clothing
- I would like to add a use to flowers. A dyer table could actually harvest them in a radius you can set and turn them into dye. We'd need a couple more colors, so a few more flower types. Using a dye item on a piece of clothing could color it. Bleach would be nice as a default action costing nothing, so we can make white stuff for doctors coats, too.

Equipment Racks
- How about we use a dual stockpile system with these, so you can specify what each of the two slots can hold? I'd like racks holding one pistol and one knife, for instance. In my opinion, the racks can double as stockpiles. For instance I could make a rack for slag chunks in my smelting hut, which people can fill while the smelter is doing his work. He wouldn't have to run far to get his next piece. He could also have a rack for the finished product, which would get emptied for him if it has a lower priority than a big stockpile.
- Racks need a switch. If I want a gun rack, I do not want my smelter to run over there and grab the guns out of it. By default he should look for stockpiles, or racks that have the stockpile mode switch turned on.

Colonist Inventory
- Since they can always engage in melee combat, I'd like an additional small weapon slot, so people would be able to carry a pistol and a knife (pistol defined as small weapon here).
- Background: A colonist being attacked by a squirrel/turtle/goldfish in melee cannot fire his gun. He will die trying, since being hit interrupts his action. Were he allowed to automatically switch to melee, a knife or even a fistbump to the face would save his life against these cunning predators.
- Maybe this could be done by fabricating 'wild west' pistol holster belts, adding a pistol carry slot and the ability to put the gun away if attacked in melee range?

Old injuries
- There's no way to repair a neck/throat yet. Colonists can get problems talking, eating, breathing, and we cannot fix it.
- Some colonists come with old wounds, too. How about if a doctor reaches level 10, he can perform surgery on old woulds, using the "replace body part" feature to add a surgery for healing them?

Town clock
- Another use I came up with in this playthrough.. if I had a way (jobs tab) to declare someone a soldier, the town clock could also be used as a manual emergency alarm, gathering the non-soldier colonists nearby (set radius) and switching soldiers to combat mode once they arrive. This would be ideal for declaring safezones and getting everyone to where they should be quickly.

Sandstone
- Since it looks very western-style, I like sandstone a lot. Yet I don't have a way of collecting it in temperate climate. How about letting colonists manufacture/gather it from the ground, yet slowly? Could be in a fashion similar to clay.. temperate zones have mud tiles that could be a slowly regrowing source.

Fishing
- Temperate zones have water. Colonists are hungry. If we can build bows, why not add fishing rods?

Animals
- My number one source of stuff always runs out. I'd like a way for animals to wander into my territory, or if I leave some alive, to breed more of them. So far the only thing I got enough of are turtles and squirrels.. oh and BOOMrats.

Guest beds
- How about a function to declare guest beds, similar to prisoner beds? There's so many friendly people stopping by, I'd like them to get comfy. Maybe gain some diplomacy points through making their stay a nice one (good beds, room quality, etc). Would work perfectly with the saloon idea up above.

Summary - Some of the items you can create can never be sold.

Steps to Reproduce -
1. Make a gold gladius (or other weapon)
2. Talk to any and all traders you come across, most will price it at 9000+
3. Notice that those who would buy it are always low on money (under 3000)
4. Notice how you cannot buy anything from them that would halfway make sense and actually be worth that much silver.. usually they carry less than 9000 silver worth of items
5. Give up trying to sell it after a couple of real life days

Expected Results - Those who buy art pieces usually have enough money on them. Either the combat supplies traders should have the same high amount or the exotic ones should also buy anything made of gold.

Actual Results - Noone could afford buying even one gold weapon of poor quality.

That would require much longer days, which I don't think would feel right.
It also would feel way too industrial-age. I'd rather just have the option of my colonists being more chummy in peacetime.

Another quite western theme would be cattle farmers.
Though not a cheap idea, this might be worth looking at. Taming or capturing wild cattle at first, using a fenced area (big animals may not climb fences, see above, to protect crops) to keep them in, every now and then being able to hand over some meat to the cooks. This could also separate butchering from cooking duty and be a starting point for real horses ingame - which could for all I care require a certain rare species to be captured and put into some cloning chamber like thing that actually produces your first pair of almost-horses, homegrown via sci-fi shenannigans.
Wool or leather could come out of this deal, too. Could require cornfields for food.

Oh, yes please!

Together with corn and bread (and beer/whiskey).

I think we can re-invent this idea.

Since we do get visitors from other places.

How about these visits - provided the visitors are technically more advanced - can, through being talked to and treated fairly good - gift you a bit of research points in the form of blueprints?
Because looking at all that shiny armor and stuff all day should give your colonists ideas.

Use a team with R4 rifles. Get them just outside the visible range of the mechanoids, then hit them with an EMP mortar. They have a much bigger explosion radius and will render them stunned. Soon as that happens, overrun them.
If you can wait until it rains, do so. Rain does damage them.

F1-F12 for menus, then hotkeys?

What helped me is building a hospital.
Check out the link in my signature, the top right building has spaceous environment +5 and beautiful environment +15 buffs. Drafting even a hypersensitive person and letting her stand in there for a time gets me even through high psychic drone attacks with 48 intensity. If in doubt, draft someone else along with that one and let them chat in there.
The town square helped a lot, too. Beautiful place, only tables declared as gathering spots, so people eat and chat there exclusively.

Yes, like I said.

Meanwhile I found another two locations that always get hit. Strange, that.

While I'm a fan of detail usually, I would be fine with keeping this simple.
Could just have differrent guns do differrent stuff. Shotgun A would fire shrapnel (shorter range, targeting bonus), Shotgun B would fire slugs (longer range, no aim bonus). Shotgun C could be researched or found or whatever and would fire bean bags (short range and no aim bonus). Same for other stun types, why not just make a taser kind pistol, or other very short range stun type club weapons? Doesn't have to be magazine types. Why not just be like "oh, Enfield ammo works better against soft targets, while M-24 ammo is thought for armored stuff and pierces rather than destroys tissue?" Could be that simple.