Messages

With this idea in my head, I'll be giving this some thought on how to implement. Cleanliness, a new noise mechanic, and possibly expanding temperature would probably be a good start. Incidentally this can probably safely move to the suggestions forum for a larger audience.

I do agree that there should be some game mechanism that provides for some positive and negative effects on productivity structures. I almost always make a large common room with pretty much all kinds of industry and leisure in it. I used to build a separate workshop with all the industry, but it's usually more efficient for me to have everything together with the stockpile etc. While this make sense for keeping the colonists happy with all that space and socialization opportunity, it really wouldn't play out this nicely in real life. I know colonists are fighting for survival, but I don't think my sculpting would be so great listening to stone cutting, machining, tailoring etc. going on a few feet away. Tool cabinet sharing only proliferates this further.

I've noticed that if none of my colonists are set to haul, my animals don't either.  But as soon as a I give a colonist a priority '1' hauling command my husky starts zipping around picking stuff up.  So it feeds off of pawn orders somehow.

This is interesting. Do you have a working example of this by chance in a save game? I'm wondering if this is a bug that should be reported.

did you set the bill up to accept rotten? go to details, and click accept rotten.

No bill for rotting, just corpse

I'm not near the game at present, but once you have the corpse bill set up, there may be a check box for "allow rotten" where you select the kinds of corpses that can be burned. Your current bill may be disallowing rotten corpses if this box isn't checked.

I think Tynan would consider this an exploit of the restricted zone system based on previous discussions, but you could have your highly skilled construction worker be the only construction-enabled colonist allowed in a workshop that is dedicated to building furniture.

As to the topic at large, there's always going to be players who want to spell out what their colonists are doing and how they prioritize. A scalable system to allow for this granularity, but not force it on all player, would seem to be ideal. I would prefer the granularity and the existing priorities currently available broken out substantially. This is indeed micromanagement, but before you call it "undesirable micromanagement," consider what players must sometimes go through to achieve the behavior they're looking for.

Or maybe just have something which dies while marked for hunting not be forbidden, even if it would normally be?

I was going to suggest the same.

I like this idea. Take it a step further and make it only do so if no pawns are currently drafted. That way if combat is happening someone doesn't take off across the map to pick something up and get shot by raiders. Some adjustments might need to be made to this to account for raiders that haven't attacked yet, or manhunting animals that may be on the map. If the code can check for the existence of those, then it would be relatively safe for the haulers to bring them in.

I understand where you're going with this, but I think this situation is better handled by the restricted zones system. A player may want some colonists drafted, even if there's no major threat on the map, and still have the hunters function accordingly. Now that there's tools available to stop colonists from wandering into hostile areas, I think more complex hauling functionality like this may be troublesome and create some confusion on what's happening, or not happening as expected.

It's been said before, but we probably eventually need a visual indicator of the poison ship's influence.

That's odd. Looks fine on Firefox 40.0.3.

The work system is not made to allow several days of work on automatic, with you doing nothing.

This is probably the nexus of the debate summed up in a sentence. I believe this should be possible, but it can't be done effectively with the current system.

I can understand that some players have no interest in doing this and would prefer to make frequent changes based on what their colonists are currently doing. I'm having trouble understanding why some are so opposed to allowing the other play style. This is especially considering that a few extra numbers and controls would make this possible.

and once again no pawn will ever get past job #2 in your list in one day.

I hate to keep going back and forth on this, but respectfully you are not considering multiple colonists having similar priority settings. By the late game I usually have quite a few colonists who are good with guns and knives, but not much of anything else. Hauling is a perfect low-skill job for them to do. A team of haulers will keep up and have times of no hauling jobs being active. In the example provided by DarknessEyes, it's clear that pawns sharing this prioritization should concentrate on hauling. Yes, I'm aware that researching is #1, and a pawn or two from the group may actually be researching assuming that a research project has been assigned. From there they haul, and if there's no hauling jobs available DarknessEyes would like them to hunt and go down the rest of the list. Yes, as soon as a hauling job comes up, someone will drop what they're doing and run for it. Understandable since that's how the current system works. Unless multiple haul jobs come up at once, a group of colonists sharing this prioritization will not all haul - they'll keep doing their secondary or tertiary tasks etc., They'll keep busy without my intervention and it's better than being idle.

The alternative to having this functionality would be to have all these colonists go idle, and then assign them some more things to do. This is the unpleasant kind of micromanagement to me, but I respect that some like to play this way.

Also consider scenarios like I mention earlier where you shelter colonists inside. This usually leads to massive idling since the amount of jobs available is reduced. I usually have to turn on a whole bunch of jobs with higher global priority (<<<< & >>>>) so they keep busy inside. Once the crisis is over, I have to go back and turn it all off.

[that brings no negative impacts]

The reason I'm shooting it down is because I only ever need the 4, and 5 is okayish but any more becomes a nuisance for changing priorities.

Also: You do bloody realize having any more then 6 numbers is stupid, and it would be better to just make the options slidable, to slide them left-to-right in the priorities. Therefore solving all ya bloody problems if you want to make them that specific.

I respect that you would only need the 4, but I'm asking players to respect that other play styles could use some more. I fully agree with the slides and its an idea I've had since I first starting playing that I don't think I've articulated anywhere. I would say that the implementation time of that system will certainly be more intensive as mentioned by others as well. Perhaps it would be best to start adding some additional numbers and see how it goes before proceeding too far.

We're debating a small feature tweak that brings no negative impacts, just some enhanced features for those that would partake. Usually this community is not combative enough shoot down ideas and dictate how the game should be played, so I'm a bit surprised to be honest.

This is incorrect. By adding a 20-point scale (to allow a perfect reverse priority) it makes it that much more cumbersome for everyone else to navigate through the priority list. A big problem would reseting priorities - what if I want to move a 10 (or multiple 10s) to 1? I'm not outright opposed to lengthening the priority scale, but if it is done we need at least some tools to make navigating through them easier.

A few thoughts:
<snip>

I wasn't thinking to have 20 numbers even though my previous post implies it. Still, I absolutely agree that adding more numbers should probably bring some of the quick tools you're mentioning to make adjustments easier. I think some of these would be a good idea in the current system even if additional numbers were not added. I'd add the ability to drag the numbers in place to increment or decrement much like the trade window to your proposed solutions. A hotkey to disable the job completely would also be a good idea.

What your not understanding is NO colonist will ever do more than 4 different job categories in a day. And more numbers will not change the idle colonist when there is no work to be done.

We must have very different ways of playing this game, which I will respect. In my case, I have this happen constantly by teams of colonists having the same priority scale. I also don't see how specifying a longer to-do list wouldn't help avoid colonists going idle.

Slidable priorities and/or a couple extra selections. Seems reasonable to me too.... so what are we debating again? Or are we just arguing now just for the sake of arguing and have nothing better to do? I know I don't, well at least for a couple hours

Or is this the new RW forum thing. Nightly trolling bouts!!! Take your bets!! 

I think this thread actually went constructive again, which is nice to see. At its core, we're debating whether the current system could use some changes to accommodate additional play styles. In summary, adding more numbers to the current manual priorities screen would help some out, and also adding some quick controls to better manage those numbers would seem to cover all aspects.

I can't say I'm against additional priority numbers as long as it doesn't become cumbersome to use for those of us that have no use for them. I'd find them useless. Hauling and cleaning are best where they are IMO. They are short notice quick task events and placing them higher than other tasks results in colonists constantly interrupting tasks to mop up a single blood spill or dropped item on the other side of the map. Honestly I wish there were a few changes to the way crops are handled so they don't do that when growing.  If I have cleaning or hauling issues I reduce the other workload on colonists who can do so.

My colonies usually have a huge hauling backlog, and for items that degrade outside, this is a problem. The worst example I usually see is a whole harvest sitting outside. High density jobs like growing that generate a haul-able material per job need to have their hauling at a less priority or they'll potentially do a single harvest and the run it to the stockpile. This is just a casualty of the current system since there's no additional intelligence there to have a grower, for example, harvest enough times to make a full stack, and then haul it. In the meantime, this is where teams of colonists come in handy and why some priorities need to be in reverse. A dedicated hauler or team of haulers following the growers seems the best alternative within the current mechanics. As I said above, highly prioritizing jobs on the right side of the list can be difficult to automate the remainder of the tasks.

Most colonists only have 1 to 3 jobs checked aside from emergency/maintenance. Most of the time one number takes care of this no issue. Once my colony gets fairly large I'll tune it with a little more detail, some might have cleaning/hauling instead of hauling/cleaning, or a couple with repair bumped ahead of construction to keep things maintained.

Honestly by the time I worry about the priority of half the things on the list I have colonists literally dedicated to specific tasks, having more than 4 numbers would be redundant to me.

This is a play style difference. I'd prefer to have additional lower priority tasks already selected so I don't have to keep finding idle colonists a job. I realize at times that the job queues get so big that even dedicated colonists will pretty much never go idle. But there are times when this happens, especially if colonists are sheltering inside, for example, via restricted zones and the usual job queue becomes very reduced.

I'd say there are those who draw some fun from running a highly efficient self-sufficient colony. Some players like to spend a good amount of time tweaking the priorities and then sitting back and seeing the colonists run the colony without so much direct intervention. I also understand players who are constantly in the priorities screen making adjustments all the time, and worry less about a "perfect setup." Can we strike a balance?

We're debating a small feature tweak that brings no negative impacts, just some enhanced features for those that would partake. Usually this community is not combative enough shoot down ideas and dictate how the game should be played, so I'm a bit surprised to be honest.

If a player wants the priorities to be essentially backwards from the global set, it cannot be done without considerable micromanagement. That is a fact of the mechanics of the current system. The only counter argument has questioned why a player would want this situation and I feel enough use cases have been offered. They're just not use cases that come up in everyone's game.

no more numbers would not change my play style, as they are not needed, when you understand how the colonist prioritize work.  And more numbers will not make your colonist anymore efficient in getting jobs done.

Respectfully, what am I not understanding? Can you please provide a method to have a colonist, or more importantly, a group of colonists execute jobs starting from the right to the left. It doesn't have to be every job, but I suspect you'll hit an issue around the fourth job. There's 20 possible jobs in the current list. That's not very flexible.

Again, colonist will very rarely finish two job priorities in a day, and those priorities reset every time they go to sleep. And as soon as a higher priority job appears, they will leave the lower priority job, to do the higher priority job.

I respectfully disagree. If my colony was routinely filthy, especially medical areas etc., I'd assign a team of low skilled colonists to clean first everyday at the start of the work shift. They will finish the job, and at that point what I really want is for them to now move on to some of the jobs to the left, some of which I may want in an order against the global priority. Without my direct intervention everyday or perhaps multiple times per day, the amount of jobs I can specify in the order I want is the issue. Why should this even be an issue if the solution is simple?

Yeah, but would you honestly need those priorities?  It's just a wild example really, provide an actual one to get your point across. 5 numbers? Maybe. 9 numbers? The guy has no idea what he's doing if he needs a priority number per 2 friggin priorities.  Priorities aren't meant to be changed and left to automate forever, one of the mechanics is changing it to suit your needs.

First off no colonist would ever do all those jobs in 1 day, and the job que is reset every time they go to sleep... so no need to have that many jobs on one colonist.

The common thread I see in the opposition to adding more priority numbers is two points:

• Players can change priorities accordingly and quite often once certain jobs have been done.
• Considering the issue from the perspective of a single colonist executing their own personal job queue without considering the other colonists.

In my example, perhaps I'd like my unskilled colonists to first engage in low skill work and only then help with some of the skilled work. If a massive construction project (say a large wall) is ongoing over the course of days, I'd like my unskilled labor force (which could be multiple colonists) hauling and cleaning. For a small team of such colonists, it is absolutely plausible for them to complete all the hauling and cleaning jobs available (point 2). From there, I'd like them to assist with the construction project. All the while, the high skilled construction colonists have been taking priority on those jobs, but there's still considerable work to be done that day. On point 1 above, it would seem you're suggesting that I micromanage the situation and keep turning off construction on the low skilled colonists until the cleaning and hauling is done and then switching it on. I like micromanagement in games, but not this kind of tedious micromanagement. Wouldn't it be easier to set my preferences up front and be done?

This was a single example with construction, but numbers get chewed up quickly when the player goes against the global priorities, hence the need for more. This can be extended and interwoven with other job types which can sometimes have a lot of labor such as growing. Perhaps I want all my colonists engaged in already customized prioritization, but then I want everyone to assist with growing and then construction as their last last priority (if they don't have it higher) before they go idle. With only four numbers, this may not be possible. The only real response to this has been that players shouldn't be trying to do that or just assign more jobs when colonists go idle. That's your opinion, but I can't call the system completely versatile and customizable in its current form. Colonists should never go idle in a well balanced job prioritization IMHO. The frustrating part of the priorities screen is that it's almost there.

Players engage games like this very differently, and it would do us all well to respect that. If you're opposed to this idea, why is that? Does more numbers threaten your play style? Seems to be that you just wouldn't use them. Only other issue I see is this taking away from Tynan's valuable development time, but I find it hard to believe that adding in additional numbers would be a big deal with an existing logical and coherent algorithm.

Yes, I understand that the priorities still go from left to right when the numbers are the same. What if I want a colonist to research and then clean, haul, craft, mine, grow and repair in that order? More numbers are needed for full customization.

As stated elsewhere, it would also be nice if some of these tasks were broken out further. Perhaps I really want a colonist to cook meals, butcher, and finally make beer in that order.

Thanks for running the numbers. My last colony started off with rice, and I didn't think it was worth it either unless the first harvest is absolutely needed ASAP.

I've always felt a few more numbers would still come in handy for full customization. If you wanted to reverse a colonists' roles completely from the default priority, there's no way to do this.

I'm also not a big fan of the manual priorities starting out at 3. I understand the logic of it to make going up and down initially easier, but I still don't like it. It's more clicks to turn tasks off completely, which is usually my first order of business.

I'll throw in my plug about presets for priorities as well. In modern context, it would seem we could build on the clothing system or similar to implement.

The best default when changing to manual priorities, would be NOTHING, blank.

Agree with this. If I'm selecting manual priorities, I have no issues starting with a clean slate and rearranging everything.

Mechanoids themselves are OP IMHO and I've always thought this. Putting aside the quantity and timing of their arrival, I believe the problem at its core is a lack of counter weapon. There's also a lack of a non-exploitative strategy that doesn't require extreme battle micromanagement (which after a while isn't fun for me personally). One caveat is that I haven't played with mechanoids too much since the EMP adaptive bug was fixed where a secondary blast of an EMP near a disabled mechanoid would wake it and render it adapted. It seemed like EMPs were geared for this threat, but this bug interfered substantially.

Just keep a couple mortars going 24/7 for a week or two to soften them up and attack when you're ready. Heck, you might get a couple lucky shots early on that disables most of the mechs early on.

I usually go for this, but mortars are so inaccurate that this leads to very tedious game play. Probably a different subject of its own, but mortars need to be more accurate or colonists need the ability to have accuracy based on a trait that can be matured. It shouldn't take a few weeks of continious mortar fire to hit a target the size of the ship. IRL, you'd have the azimuth figured out and would have bracketed the target enough to get the elevation spot on. A single "fire for effect" from all mortars against a single point would be more rewarding than all shots being independent of one another.

What they're missing for sure is a mechanoid that is vulnerable in melee.

Another good idea. Perhaps a melee weapon that has some EMP capabilities built in? This would put shields and brawlers in play instead of being cut to pieces.

Speaking of shields, I also think they should be able to be thrown through shields. I could see active energetics not passing, but throwing a grenade is a bit different. I've had this opinion since shields came out regardless of mechanoids and feel it would enhance gameplay on all sides.