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all the talk of story is kind of missing the point.

if you are in a poor colony with no resources, then you get your various stories about monsters killing useless people an sentimental saps saving their loved ones so some other git can eat them for lunch.

no one is trying to take that away. It would just be nice to know the option is there to fix problems too. An in THEORY it IS!!! if we talk of the canon of the game, glitterworlds exist. An they do have a way to save a person with a broken spine etc etc. An if every player was on that page, the optimal goal ACTUALLY becomes send them to space. But also not because trying that may get you killed etc etc. The problem is, the canon isnt the game, an there is no trader who passes by with scar-spray, the glitterworld medicine for those pesky scars that seem to hurt so much even though that makes little sense.

An that is an actual LITERAL oversight, because the canon says one thing an the mechanics say quite another. If you dont like that, then change what Glitterworld means, or fix the mechanics. Itd still be nice from a gameplay perspective to fix some of those injuries an to actually have to make those choices. An personally, that makes the drama all the more interesting, because i also feel like i have some choices in the matter.

Im sorry, i know they are sort of helpful, but the expectations buffs are driving me bananas. They suck, so much.

in what world is it a good idea for my pawns to get more miserable AFTER they achieve stuff. legit, they start out super happy, an as the colony gets BETTER they GET WORSE!!! an considering how important happiness is to a colonists work speed, this is even more bizarre. I would 100% rather my colonists not get the buff an in return never get the debuff than what it currently stands as. Yeah, itll be harder at first, but at least i wont have to deal with sudden vaguely inconsistent changes in productivity due to having too many chickens or because of ai mainframes... PARTICULARLY CHICKENS. its the worst, because they make MORE WORK an yet my colonists suddenly say "fuck it, im too good for this" :\

The problem with all this is the Ai, when there was FOW (yes it existed in RW) the AI had the advantage and just knew where all your stuff was whereas you had no clue where they were, to reverse this would have meant MASSIVE AI code changes, the kind you just dont want undertake. So FOW was removed which levelled the playing field.

doing a bit of ai work on a project of my own, im curious why it would be such a massive undertaking to change RW's ai. Currently, they clearly need to see everything to select a target, but once they have a target they charge off etc etc. Seems to me, not having all the information just means the ai needs to have a process to acquire targets. An i know, for certain, with experience behind it,  that that isnt that hard to implement in c#. I designed half a dozen of those behaviours in half a day for a 2d top down game an my coder had them built in about 3 days worth of work. An most of that work was on architecture that had nothing to do with target acquisition.

My point is, i havent code dived RW that much, an im curious what is going on in the backend that would be so hard to pull out an rebuild for oppositional pawn behaviour? Does it have something to do with storytellers, do they assign targets atm?

**edit: to be 100% clear i am not remotely as experienced a designer as Tynan and my coder isnt either, thus why im so confused.

i aint reading this thread. i cant imagine the hellish cesspool of nonsense that has probably been spewed forth, an i have no intention of adding to that.

instead, my only point is this. its daft to have sexual orientation or relationship preference as a trait. yeah yeah crusader kings did it, but its daft. drop it as a trait an instead make preference be another field in the stats box, like work speed. an follow on, throw in three options, straight gay an other. Why, because why do it any other way. its not about political correctness or sjw stuff or anything, its just a specific thing that every single person has. a preference. Everyone has it. By making gay a trait what you are really saying is that its a very special thing about those people. an sexual preference does not make a person special.

an since we are here, having this nonsense discussion, itd be nice to see alternative relationships to monogamy be a thing. theres a whole giant load of them out there, an itd add some spicy drama to the colonies. Once again, not a trait, just a stat.

Oh, final point, would it really be so bad to have an "other" category for gender too. like, we dont have showers or toilets or any of that stuff, so how terrible-charged could that addition be :\ hell, even if showers an personal hygiene was a thing id still argue its stupid not to have an "other" option :\

why are people saying this is hard to implement or that the engine cant handle it O.o

RW is built in unity, a 3d engine that was repurposed for 2d work. its currently using older editions of unity, but that means its actually got less tools available for 2d than 3d. Tynan basically overhauled the engine for his purposes, but it still quite easily has the capacity to do 3d work, because thats what the engine was originally made for :\

as to implementation, RW is also code wise very flexible an well put together. it actually wouldnt be all that hard to extend it into 3 dimensions because of that. an i have a suspicion it was coded in such a way specifically so it could be modified that way if it was desired.

having said that, the idea that it uses 2 planes instead of 3 to focus more on characters tends to ring closer to truth to my ears. Expanding into 3d would open the game up to all sorts of neat stuff, but the game itself doesnt have enough in it yet. Hell, its still having core systems implemented. As such, the gains from going 3d arent all that great, at the moment. Sure, you get some more aspects to base building and you probably change the way kill boxes an mining work, but you also have a boatload of work to do with the ai of enemies, an you have to design and implement underground stuff an all of these things are things the game could use work on right now without the need to add 3d. My feelings are that 3d is a nice thing that might happen when everything else feels a bit more solid. Like ai, an various objects, an relationships get another pass, an so on an so forth.

Adding 3d will expand on whats already there, so the more stuff you have there the more valuable working on 3d becomes.

+1 to this. every idea that makes colonists more like actual people an less like little robots the better.

i want their survival behaviour to be dictated by their traits an skills, i want them to have aspirations an goals of their own that fit with them, i want them to be drafter, go to a fight, an then do stuff in that fight without micromanaging. the more agency an autonomy the characters have, the better. i mean, thats why they go berserk isnt it. i mean legit i have never seen someone so miserable that they turn around an try to murder people The Shining style, an yet its a regular thing in RW. I want my pawns to have some POSITIVE autonomy. i want them to be clever when i wasnt expecting it, to make sane decisions.

tl:dr micro management kills stories dead

ive tried that, i definitely cannot do that... are you sure you can?

Note to self : Stop answering the same topic ad infinitum

can you, can you please do that. i like reading others thoughts on why they find FOW bad because they are varied an filled with their feelings. Your views are always filled with stuff you think proves your point like you're a designer on staff... which you arent. It muddies the waters somewhat having an overzealous naysayer constantly showing up an expounding ad infinitum about how this or that idea is terrible. not to mention you have managed to derail so many of these threads that way.

so lets all get back on track, anyone got some other suggestions to do with guard posts an patrols, ignoring for the moment the FOW stuff which was a footnote in the OP. personally, i still think itd be useful to have a dedicated job to make sure predators dont go the full Arnie on folks during winter.

i find the giant maps dont get cluttered like the smaller ones, and are just a better play experience long term(the trekking in the first few months is annoying but once its done its done) as such im all for there being more actual stuff in a map.

an sidenote, if drop pods are cluttering the map, that says more about drop pods needing to occur less than it does about the map being cluttered :\

hell that reminds me, putting aside FOW for a sec. I still kinda want a patrol or guardpost thing, because i am sick to death of hungry bears ninja mauling people.

legit, winter is the worst. i basically have to go an cull the bear population if i dont want them eating someone, an on giant maps that is a pain in the can. Legit though, since bears might enter a base an not be hungry, the turrets ignore them. everyone ignores them. an then boom, three days later they're ravenous an maul a dog or something.

On that note, id also love it if i got a notification when a pawn went into survival mode. i want to know if a pawn is running for his life or not. Thats important. Doesnt fix animals being eaten, but its a step in the right direction.

id like it if when a pawn was idle they just defaulted to doing a thing... something. i know i could fill their work priorities with 4's but thats a pain, an also bad

ive seen a pacifist beat a knife wielding badass TO DEATH O.o he legit just kept hitting him after hed collapsed... dunno if it was a bug but damned if it wasnt shocking.

The problem is now everyone gets into fights an literally no one tries to stop them :\ an why dont we have other social "occurences". It would be hilarious to me to see random pawns drop tools an start hooking up in the shed. Or for two pawns to just drop work an have a deep convo that actually has them drop work. or hell, for two pawns to just go for a walk together. basically MOAR INTERACTIONS PLEASEEEEE THEY RAD!!!!

+1 for someone seeing this an knowing that some ppl want some unknowns in their RW experience

actually, alot of us do know how they work.. side effect of a big modding community that sneak peaks at the code.

the storytellers are complicated, but they are proof of concept atm, an need massive refinement.. but AI is super complicated an can always use refinement

+1 the pants of this one brother, preach all the removal of micromanagey nonsense