So I have been playing the latest alpha and I enjoy all of the new features a lot. During one point I spawned a random colony in a deprived desert biome, where 3 colonists, 1 of which were an "Empiath" or pacifist and two very elderly people were struggling to survive. After trying to set up as quick as humanly possible both my elderly colonists got killed by the 1 man wave, with me being left with only the empiath to dig 3 graves right outside the base. 2 for the elderly couple who were just now deceased and one for him. The director took pity on my pathetic colony and granted me a new colonist, who couldn't haul things. Shortly after my empiath died. I kept getting new colonists much like the unemployment checks I collect every week, but there were just one reoccuring issue. A lot of my colonsts had very crippling disadvantages. Many of which related to them not being able to do certain tasks because of their backstory.
Back in the first alphas there were generally only the medieval lordling which came up all the time and really couldn't do much of anything and while the amount of jobs a colonist now can work on have increased, so have the possible disadvantages. However now an elderly woman with dementia and cataracht, even while it is still technically possible for her to participate in combat, can not with her slightly more healthy husband fight off even the easiest bands.
I propose that we look over the difficulty certain backstories present and give lower weight to colonists who have severe disadvantages. An elderly comissar isn't going to be very good at the one job she or he actually can do, and while it indeed does add flavor to the game having these useless people in the colony and while it does stay faithful to the DF ideology; it kinda makes gameplays a little too unpredictable. While in DF dwarves could be really crap at A or B, but they would never really refuse to do any jobs you assigned them to.
Another thing is the speed and pacing of the game. I think we need faster speed sliders. The game I played yesterday took me the entire Wednesday to complete and I still didn't get much done in the game. I don't feel an additional slider would have much effect on the gameplay itself other than to skip parts of general uneventfulness.
In summary; I absolutely adore this game. Sylvester, my fine gentleman: You and your development team have done wonderful job on this game! However Rimworld risks becoming a very time consuming game with relatively low amount of eventual progress being made in sessions, and that saddens me because I have many other things to do than spend hours playing Rimworld and you don't get much done in a 1 or 2 hr. session I'm afraid. On DF I can just put the game speed to 200 ticks per second and watch my dwarves pretty much dig a fort out in a minute or so. So please consider implementing similar systems to speed up the game a bit. As far as games are concerned; time is relative after all.
Back in the first alphas there were generally only the medieval lordling which came up all the time and really couldn't do much of anything and while the amount of jobs a colonist now can work on have increased, so have the possible disadvantages. However now an elderly woman with dementia and cataracht, even while it is still technically possible for her to participate in combat, can not with her slightly more healthy husband fight off even the easiest bands.
I propose that we look over the difficulty certain backstories present and give lower weight to colonists who have severe disadvantages. An elderly comissar isn't going to be very good at the one job she or he actually can do, and while it indeed does add flavor to the game having these useless people in the colony and while it does stay faithful to the DF ideology; it kinda makes gameplays a little too unpredictable. While in DF dwarves could be really crap at A or B, but they would never really refuse to do any jobs you assigned them to.
Another thing is the speed and pacing of the game. I think we need faster speed sliders. The game I played yesterday took me the entire Wednesday to complete and I still didn't get much done in the game. I don't feel an additional slider would have much effect on the gameplay itself other than to skip parts of general uneventfulness.
In summary; I absolutely adore this game. Sylvester, my fine gentleman: You and your development team have done wonderful job on this game! However Rimworld risks becoming a very time consuming game with relatively low amount of eventual progress being made in sessions, and that saddens me because I have many other things to do than spend hours playing Rimworld and you don't get much done in a 1 or 2 hr. session I'm afraid. On DF I can just put the game speed to 200 ticks per second and watch my dwarves pretty much dig a fort out in a minute or so. So please consider implementing similar systems to speed up the game a bit. As far as games are concerned; time is relative after all.