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I'd really like to see more sophistication in the enemy attacks. If they could perhaps take advantage of vulnerable power sources or conduits, especially if they already 'know' that turrets are connected to those sources (perhaps from a previous attack), that would make them seem much more creative. Attackers with advanced weaponry might want to try grenading their way in through multiple walls simultaneously rather than always going through the obvious kill box. In fact, once they see the active guns, why not retreat or try to find another way in?

I hesitate to suggest such things because my brain aches when I try to imagine how I'd code them, but it would be brilliant if pulled off by an AI genius.

Some alternative endings might be fun, such as leaving on a mission to try to take out the bases of all the raiders. If it were possible to tech up to the point where you have accurate laser weapons and rocket launchers it would be rather satisfying to take one's pawns into a pirate base and eliminate them all. The ship escape is a satisfying ending (and I do like that there's an ending) but one or two more endings would be even better! Perhaps a boss fight, or an invasion by all tribes at once in a massive shoot out. Or...

Will this compensate for all my turrets having to be switched on/off manually by pawns in the next release? Ie will I be able to put the turrets on a separate circuit and have one single on/off switch?

they decrease accuracy closer to the end of the fire, they seem to shoot over them just fine.
the ones closer to the pawns are mostly to keep raiders out of melee range.
when they are standing 'on top' of the sandbags they provide little cover, standing 'behind' the sandbags is what provides cover.
which is why the turrets are surrounded, it absorbs some of the fire so they last longer drawing the raiders in close, close + turret explosion = shredded raiders.

Thanks. What with turrets now needing to be turned on and off by colonists in the next version, I reckon I'll need to use less turrets and a kill box more like this one. My concern was always the flood of raiders reaching melee range.

Does having double-wide sandbags decrease the accuracy of your pawns? I don't know how it works but would have assumed that every sandbag except the one you're directly behind would decrease your accuracy? Actually it occurs to me I have no idea how much protection a sandbag gives you.

That is one beautiful clothing stats page my friend. Wiki done right!

Would it be possible to add the amount of materials required to craft each item?

Player can no longer magically toggle power on any item. Rather, you designate power to be toggled and the colonists go do it.

Whoa! turrets are going to need colonists running around turning them all on. That's certainly going to increase my sense of frantic when mechs drop on my base...

Eating now takes priority even over emergency work (doctoring, firefighting) if a colonist is starving

Hurrah!

I wondered if this might be resolved by making the 'Patient' priority determine when someone would eat. Then, normally, that priority would be lower than doctoring and fightfighting but you could make it higher if you wanted. But probably it's just best if you eat rather than heroically starve.

My two most annoying things are:-
1) Needing to repeatedly click "prioritise this job" every time a pawn hauls only part of the required resources to a building location. This is especially irritating if I want them to do a quick line of power conduits during a siege when they'd rather go to bed. "Please just do all the conduits - it'll only take you 5 seconds!"
2) I really wish there was a 'DO NOT LEAVE HOME ZONE' button I could toggle during attacks.

EMP grenades and mortars are too underpowered, does anyone use them?

Nope, I never bother with them. I would much rather have the person manning an EMP mortar or wielding an EMP grenade to be on something that does damage. There's no need to stun what's dead.

In my turret kill box I find having two or three pawns in doorways wielding EMP grenades to be quite useful at preventing the 'mess' of turret explosions and incendiary fires. They just keep stunning the mechs to let the mass of turrets wear them down. Once I have a perma-stun in place I let the R-4s come out and finish the job. Seems to work fine on 4 or 5 centipedes even if they do adapt rapidly in borg fashion. I've not had to try it on larger numbers yet.

Mortars on the other hand seem infuriatingly inaccurate even with skilled shooters. I hit a scyther once with an emp mortar after about 800 shots. What joy. I was so shocked I didn't reach it in time before it came back to life.

You could also check the incident worker code

The what now?

I'm not 100% sure how the game is coded, but this is my theory. Raiders and mechs will target trade beacons, but if one isn't available to land on, they will default to any opening they can find in your home region. I say this because I often get the "landing right on top of you!" event even before I have a trade beacon set up (maybe the beacon completely prevents this from happening though).

That fits with my experience. The first drop on my base, before I had a trade beacon, was into an area containing my solar panels and wind turbines, far, far, from my kill box. Either this was a random space near a second (walled off) entrance to my base or it was because my pawns had just been very active in that area, building the power systems, mining out steel and setting up a cooler.

After I built the trade beacon, all the drops were straight on top of the beacon, which also happens to be the most active place that my pawns walked through.

On reddit the view seems split 50/50 but no one seems to know for sure.

Thanks! So the mood bar always gradually moves towards where the triangle is?

Does this mean that if a colonist's break point is 10% then I need a sustained -40 in mood stats over sufficient time for the mood to drop from the default 50% to 10%?

Hi all,

Couple of questions. I've played through about 4 colonies and apart from the first one when I didn't understand that mechs would out-range my turrets, all my colonies have been successful. But I realise I still don't entirely understand how moods work.

What does the mood bar represent? Does it reflect the sum of the mood stats right now, or is it a sum over time? To put it another way, if an urgently hungry colonist eats a fine meal does the mood debuff instantly vanish or does it take time to build up a positive mood?

What does the white triangle under the mood bar represent? I'm assuming the vertical line is the colonists' breaking point, but not sure how long the mood has to be going down before a break occurs. It seems to me that the bar is gradually moving which doesn't seem consistent with my assumption that the bar is just the sum of mood stats.

Also I've seen the bar going up while there were clearly more negatives than positives. Is this because the colonist mood has become *less* negative than it was?

Even though I don't really understand moods it's not been too difficult to avoid mental breaks. The only major problem I had was when I underestimated the amount of food I'd need at very high latitude (and didn't know about indoor planting) and had to resort to cannibalism to get me through the winter...

The other question I have is about how mechs (or any raiders really) know where to drop on your base. I've seen some on reddit say that the drop always goes where your colonists have spent the most time. For my bases that tends to mean my main stockpile which I place handily in the middle of my kill box. Is this how it works? Or are they locking on to my trading beacon (also in the middle of my stockpile)?

Fantastic game so far. I've totally got my money's worth already. This has all the addictiveness of a 'just one more turn' 4X strategy, plus my personal emotional involvement in the survival of my pawns. The most important thing emotionally for me is that my three original colonists must always survive to the bitter end and escape in the ship.

I'm not sure I have many (if any) suggestions for changes. The only thing I really dislike are sieges because my mortars are so damn inaccurate and I have to run around firefighting and trying to keep the mortar firers fed and my walls and power lines rebuilt until the raiders condescend to attack. And It would be really interesting to be able to attack someone else's base for once. I'd love to attempt to knock out their power system so their turrets don't work and then start fires everywhere and watch them all burn.... Sweet revenge! . It would also change things around a bit if the AI tried to gain access via some other route than via my blatantly tempting killbox.

I understand the desire for spreading disease, and it makes sense. I just can't think of a way to make gameplay around that.

If you're gonna add a problem into a game, you also have to add a solution. Spreading disease is easy to code. But how do players fight it? Quarantine? Special doctor garments? All this adds a lot of complexity.

I was surprised that diseases don't spread. I'm also surprised that according to an earlier comment, those suffering (say) Malaria only have to go to bed for their treatments. I figured they would get worse if they weren't in bed all the time. Isn't this how it works?

Anyway, in terms of a game mechanic for diseases spreading, I'd say if you spend any time in the same room as an infected pawn, you have a chance to catch the disease also (after a certain delay). This gives an incentive to quarantine infected colonists in rooms away from the general flow of traffic. It also means doctors are prone to catching the diseases they're trying to treat though putting colonists in proper hospital beds could also significantly reduce the risk.

EDIT: Temperature of the rooms could also speed up or slow down the impact of a disease, depending on the type of infection.

I was once a member of a convent of nuns where a visitor brought in a nasty vomiting bug. The infirmarian caught it, spread it to half the community, then the deputy infirmarian had to take over. She caught it and spread it to the other half of the community. In the end only a couple of nuns escaped without ill effects.

Actually this game would make a good monastery simulator with a few mods