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I like this. It would help in having visual clues as to what order you are going to build out your base.

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Oi vey.

You are completely right, I was a little hasty when I said that setting must come before mechanics. I forgot to add "except when the game doesn't have a setting, or world. Or dealing with complex systems such as human behavior, human survival, research, development, and establishment of said technologies and constructs.".

Really? You had to go there with tetris? That is specifically a game with no setting, that never had a setting, and doesn't need a setting. Poker doesn't have a setting, or chess. That is because they are strictly games with mechanics meant to employ player skill and luck with no story to tell. I'm sure you see the difference in a game that releases with a lore primer, has a setting, and deals with real life equivalents to humans, plants, and animals interacting in a worldspace.

I would also argue that most flight simulators had their settings before their mechanics. If it is simulating world war 2 aircraft, you have WW2 planes with WW2 plane specs (acceleration, top speed, armaments, ect). It just so happens that they have no narrative to go along with their setting aside from "fly".

Finally, within the context of my post I'm pretty sure it's plain that I was talking about how this game is seriously lacking in the setting department by mostly having a flawed premise that doesn't work with it's mechanics.

If your building a game to be centered around the narrative/setting/story, then setting must come before mechanics.

This game is centered around it. So what is the problem? Did you just want to point out how I was wrong in using "must"?

I'm not even bloody against longer days/years. Just the fact that saying we should do it to be more realistic is a honestly worthless reason because nobody will really care if the days of the year are accurate.

Except I didn't say that it should be done simply for the sake of realism, the topic is about birthdays - there are a lot more mechanical reasons to have it more realistic. We can't have birthdays if the timescale is as jacked up as it is. Just like we can't have sensible construction times, research lengths, relationship development, crafting times, event spacing, faction interactions, or just about anything else with the timescale as it is. I was simply making a point that with how close to the sun our colonist are, we should have long-pork bacon, not people.

"Simply" for the sake of realism implies I just want it to match a real life sustaining orbit just so that it matches.

Oh, and I care if it matches! Since I am not very unique in the grand scheme of things, not very special, It is safe to say someone else has to agree with me. It is rare to be original. Besides, I enjoy this back and forth - I married my wife because she is pretty and respected the fact I'm an introvert, so I don't like getting her worked up with debate. My family and friends are rather dull and interested only in practical hands-on topics like the grass needing to be mowed, or the weather. . .Or if they need a metric or standard tool for the job. I work construction, co-own a landscaping business, and have two fifteen foot moving trucks. I'm a manual laborer, folks like you are how I get my stimulation for the day. Talking about ideas, debating intellectually over stuff that is meaningless in the sense they provide nothing to my family or financial security.

Point of that is that I don't want to frustrate people, I just like to be stimulated intellectually, and want to do the same to others.

Thank the nerd gods I'm not alone.

Anyone else think that space trade outside of within your own solar system would be a bad investment? By the time you get to that place with what were fancy high tech guns, they've had hundreds of years to completely make those guns obsolete. Same for food - that food you are lugging to your destination could have developed into an allergy for those people, or a cultural taboo in the time you traveled there - they might even want to trade for your dog when you get there and it's a capital crime in their society to keep animals as anything but food. Slavers? What happens when they are in cryosleep and pass over a glitterworld that wasn't there when you planned your trip. Now they just blew you up because slavery is punishable by death.

Pirates. Dudes who drop pod from their perfectly good space ship to attack your colony. Pirates are pirates to get rich and live hedonistically. Why are they trolling rimworlds - I thought I cleared the tech tree, but maybe I missed the strip club tech.

You say there has to be a balance, then it should be equally silly for it to be changed and for it to stay the way it is.

If it is silly for gameplay reasons ( I personally don't see how this could be, unless it is somehow hardcoded or something), then the fact that a sci-fi simulation game was built around something so diametrically opposed to the nature of both genres is indisputably just as silly. If you can concede to that, than I can concede to your view - however I would still like to see some evidence as to why it isn't a viable alternative aside from conjecture. My arguments are grounded in evidence, fact, and untested (as I don't have the skills or means to implement them to test them) but well thought out hypothesis of what seem viable solutions to elements of the game which I feel could be improved on.

At different points throughout development people have shot down ideas from myself and others, only for them to be introduced in game at a later point. Assuming something hasn't been implemented because it is superior or that there is some other reason (engine or gameplay) is indeed a simple point, so much so as to be useless as it doesn't offer definitive reasoning nor the option to rebuttal in the case of an argument for it to stay the same or an argument for a different solution.

So. . .

The lore. We have a primer. In essence it has three main points:

1)There is no fast way around space - it's takes forever
2)There are no sapient alien species
3)Humanity has spread but there is no rhyme or reason to this, no structure, so each settled planet rolls a D20 to see if it regresses or advances in technology.

Now, I've been designing game systems and worlds since I was little, having two D&D nerds for parents. I know this differs from video game design, but I think it shares enough parallels to validate the point I'm going to try and make.

Setting must come before mechanics. Without a fleshed out setting that works, your mechanics are going to be convoluted and ill suited to your world. If you use stock D&D magic, but your magic users draw the power from living things in lore, then that magic system isn't going to make sense.

If you say there is no FTL/Warp/Hyperspace then every ship that launches out of your solar system is basically a one way trip. You don't know what their destination is going to be like when they get there, or even if they survived that trip.

If you say there are no sapient species, then that kinda flies in the face of secular wisdom that states that is highly improbable given how many planets can support life as we know it. That isn't counting for the possibility of sapient life that isn't how we know it.

If you say that humans regress more than they progress once they leave their space travel capable society, then you run into a whole slew of other issues when you don't account for technologies present and the viability of life at all levels of human technology. It is further complicated when you have a bunch of people of all different technology levels sharing a ship and then a planet. How would that work? How did they end up on the same ship and planet without the lesser technologically advanced being slaves? I find it difficult to imagine some glitterworld dudes stopping off at some planet full of primitives and convincing them to hop aboard. Then we have the elephant in the room: Language. If people have changed so much on all these planets, how can we logically assume they all speak the same language still? Even people who left a glitterworld 1000 years ago and retained their technology level, they would probably have seen their language change enough to make communication a pain in the butt.

Then we have this amazing amount of space traffic. . . Populations that are nigh infinite that care nothing for their losses. Humans living on planets so close to the sun that their spacecraft would melt in orbit. Zero personal hygiene, no need to bathe, and apparently get enough water to survive by eating potatoes which are incredibly starchy...

We got folks going one place, but just happen to flyby a life sustaining planet when their ship messes up and they end up on the planet. Then they want to leave. They want to build a space ship. They build a spaceship with a couple of cavemen, some medieval dudes, some dudes who were trying to kill you and take all you own a couple days ago, and a transgender jeweler.

Maybe I'm alone in these inconsistencies irking me - could very well be because of my passion for world building. Just figured this would be a much more reasonable request than some of my other more difficult to implement suggestions.

Pern! Great novels though parts of them were only one letter off the title....

Hehe. I caught that. Think about who writes them though. Who wrote the vampire chronicles (interview with a vampire, vampire lestat, QotD, Armand, ect.). They are horny old ladies gettin' their freak out and makin' money with it. At least they are real stories with substance, unlike all them super smut books targeted as sexually oppressed middle aged caucasian women.

Know how many features have been implemented that others or myself have suggested that people have bashed using the argument of gameplay over realism/science? You'd think people would start coming up with better arguments against it.

Once again though, for the detractors: the genre is sci-fi colony sim. Sci-fi being short for science fiction and sim being short for simulation. What are the principles of the scifi genre? Utilizing science as we know it to imagine the science of tomorrow. It is speculative, using creative thought to predict future innovations with a grounding in scientific principles or theory. It wants to appeal to those who are laymen in the science, and wants to make those not inducted into the wonders of science interested in it.

Now, simulation should be rather self explanatory. Simulations attempt to replicate real or theoretical processes.

We don't need to prioritize science/realism over gameplay, but why on earth does it have to be one or the other? Why do we have to sacrifice one or the other to have an enjoyable experience? Especially since the closer to science and and realism you get the more difficult things become, but then you rely less upon completely absurd and clearly synthetic methods of creating challenge for the player to overcome.

I suppose if the goal is to have an "arcade-like" casual game, where the science fiction part amounts to "space and lazers dewd" and the rest is simulating how bad AI is abused in some artificial "killbox" construct that nothing would really run into - animals wouldn't even go there with the scent of death in the air. Then the rest of the game is essentially the deployment phase of tower defense game except you have to gather the materials and wait for your TD-maze and "towers" to be built.

I guess then we are spot on and the game is exactly where it needs to be going. Grats.

Edit: We can all see by the next alpha's feature list that whomever likes the tower defense is going to be sorely disappointed - the game is moving in the direction of the true meaning of simulation and science fiction, it has steadily been going that way since the start. The rest of you who are stuck on the tower defense game are going to be continually dismayed as Ludeon moves forward I think.

The issue is the timescale. The distance of our rimworld to it's sun wouldn't be able to support human or plant life. Just saying.

This is why I think we really need an abstract time scale a la The Guild 2

Personally, I find the whole trade beacon thing kinda suspect. The amount of offworld traffic is kinda weird for it being a rimworld with no FTL/Warp.

I'd much prefer events to either have some of your colonist going off map, or other faction pawns coming from off map.

Especially considering how not all factions are technologically advance - why would they even have a trade beacon?

Otherwise, great ideas.

Allow me to put something else forward then.

First a shameless plug to my suggestion on traits: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=17605.0

Now, with a system such as that, why not have an "origin trait". It would be the first trait the game chooses for the pawn and it would determine what technology/developmental level they hail from. After the game selects that, it will select backgrounds and traits allowed by that particular origin - reason for this is so a caveman doesn't end up with backgrounds or traits pertaining to lasers and asteroids.

Origins will determine how a character's mood is affected by things such as killing, seeing bodies, eating meat or veggies, living conditions (sharing rooms or not - still modifiable by traits). A caveman might not mind sharing rooms and eating raw food, but a glitterworld person wouldn't want to eat meat and they abhor violence.

In a sense it would function like "races" in other games. It could even affect skill caps, research, and crafting in a system such as (shameless plug two -.-): https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=17598.0

Where a caveman couldn't research geothermal energy or construct a laser turret.

Okay, so MVP runs outta it's install folder with it's own config file in there. HCSK runs outta it's directory and keeps it's config file in appdata, so they won't conflict right? So long as I have them each in their own installation directories. . .

Hello,

I don't mean to be a debbie downer, but we have to consider that we are dealing with people from several developmental levels. Developmental levels presented IG:

Glitterworld
Urbworld - Mirroring present times and shortly after as we go to the stars.
Indworld - Industrial age. Machines and factories are coming into play.
Midworld - Medieval times. Feudal kingdoms.
Caveworld - Prehistoric societies.

Based on this, we can extrapolate there are worlds at other levels - renaissance, bronze age, ect.

Now, this model of psychology might work for modern human psychology, but what about the pawns whom hail form societies of other than that of suburban earth twentieth century?

Multiple schools of thought exist regarding the effects of combat and killing of other human beings. One school of thought is that society pushes people to conform to a code of conduct that is strictly against violence. Anyone who displays a disregard for this social pressure, or an aptitude for violence are dubbed sociopaths, psychopaths, anti-social - even if it is simply a person meeting violence with violence. We see it in our childrens schools where bullies can slip by, but if your child defends himself from them using the only way bullies respond to (violence), then your child isn't conforming. After all, words and shoving (the way of most bullies) is more acceptable then decking bullies.

Now, when society tells you that violence is unacceptable throughout your whole childhood, and then requires roles that utilize violence in professions in adulthood, we see psychological disorders arise. PTSD amongst soldiers and law enforcement for example. This same line of thought extends beyond just humans though, it goes into the animal kingdom. We anthropomorphize animals who historically have been viewed as tools and food. We give them human "rights" - dictating to other humans how to treat their property, spend exorbitant amounts of money on the healthcare of non-working/non-producing animals, and we dictate the treatment of livestock beyond what is required to ensure the end product meets human health regulations.

Being a latino native of South East San Diego, growing up in that environment, I can say with certainty that tribal cultures are right in our backyard. Polite society call them gangs, but in every sense they are tribes. Anyone who grew up rough can tell you that these tribals aren't monsters - well most of them aren't. They are every day people who love to the fullest, hate to the fullest, fight their hardest, and fear nothing - because fear makes you weak and susceptible to death or excommunication from the tribe. When tribes clash over the boundaries of their territories, people are likely to die, or there are at least going to be individual fights or skirmishes that lead to injury. The tribesmen who fought well are praised, the ones who ran are ridiculed and ostracized, the ones who fall due to the conflict are mourned and avenged if it is still possible to win the conflict. These tribesmen are highly unlikely to develop psychological disorders due to the violence and lifestyle. Usually when they do it is because of other inherent issues, drug consumption, or having lost to much to cope with it.

Presented with these realizations, these examples of human behavior both within modern "polite" society and without, I don't think this type of system would work for all pawns from all technological/developmental levels - much less all pawns from present to post-present levels.

If combat really made people so unstable with PTSD, essentially unusable or a liability, warlike cultures would have ceased to exist because their people would all have been to mucked up to function properly outside of battle.

It is for this reason I think our society is to blame for the prevalence of people turned into nutters due to bad situations. During a crisis or a disaster, you will quickly come to see who is worth their salt - most people break or soldier on right at the onset of the situation. The wildcards are those who may or may not lose their S**T when it hits the fan. Then there are the minority that slowly lose it.

Just my own observations and experiences. Take 'em or not, but I apologize for what has likely become quite the wall of text.

Cheers,
Michael

Anyone ever read Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels?

Think "Thread" fall.

Anyone ever played Alpha Centauri?

Think Xenofungus and Mindworms.

Anyone ever played Starcraft?

Think creep.

Put them all together and you have a pretty awesome event  that spawns in nasty non-sapient lifeforms.

Hello,

So, I've got HardcoreSk installed currently. The Mod Variety Pack looks cool and I wanted to try it out, but I don't want to mess up my install of HardcoreSk. Is there any way to have multiple modded installations?

Thanks,
Michael