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New suggestion DP!

Things killed by force targeted turrets should automatically be unforbidden.

It's likely that graves have low beauty as graveyards aren't the happiest of places and being ugly would upset the colonists eventually. This could be changed in A10 with the new joy system. Graves should have little to no impact on beauty but suck the joy out of colonists.

Besides, it would also pretty much turn the mortar into a useless lump of metal.

I don't know if you've ever used a mortar before, but it IS a useless lump of metal without a spotter, relaying to the guy aiming and adjusting the mortar, where the last shell hit and what he should adjust in order to hit a target.

Dslyecxi's latest ShackTac video shows this beautifully...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OReQ1tJcfb8

Edit: Aww, no embedded uChoob?

Indeed. I can just imagine it now; Got a neat killbox set up, a large raiding party lands and catches me with my pants down, killing a random colonist who snuck out to collect something worthless. Raiders grab the key and let themselves in through the side door. A total shitstorm happens.

Pretty sure this would have already been requested, but I'm going to suggest it again just in case;

Different lock states on doors. Because REASONS.

Unlocked - Anyone can open the door; colonists, visitors or raiders.
Locked (Friendly) - Colonists and visitors can open the door. Raiders cannot and have to beat it down.
Locked (Colonist) - Only colonists can open the door. Visitors cannot pass and raiders have to beat it down.
Locked (Everyone) - No-one uses the door.

There are a few different scenarios in which these different lock states could be handy. A prison, for example, could have an unlocked door that leads to a walled, unroofed, compound so that prisoners can stretch their legs but remain in custody and not have any outdoor/cabin fever debuffs. Another door could be left unlocked such that raiders enter the base via a room that's... warm.

Animals would also be incapable of operating a door owing to a distinct lack of opposable thumbs, hands, or a brain capable of figuring out doors. Though, having said that, if monkeys are in the game they could open unlocked doors and leave them open. Fun times!

Addendum!

Whilst musing about how to solve the problem of restricting access to alcohol for high risk colonists, I thought of an addition to the above;

Locked (Restricted) - Would only let permitted colonists through.

Though that doesn't work when you consider the colonists carry a key that opens all doors, so perhaps the doors could be brought into the 51st century by using swipe cards or some other form of scanner rather than a key to open them for permitted persons.

Also, allowing raiders to take a dead colonist's key/card and use it to open doors would be fun.

Unless you happen to have a geothermal vent near to your killbox, you'll want a bank of batteries somewhere near to your killbox that can be connected in the event of an emergency.

If you watch a patch of grass/plants carefully, you should see little yellow dots being released and floating off somewhere before disappearing (they land). These are seeds being produced by plants and they will happily float over a few paved tiles.

If you want to keep growing areas free of other plants, just drop flowers or something in them.

So if you want to stop certain plants growing in a growing area, plant different plants in that area? Err...

Slight thread-necro as I want to support the inclusion of a water system. Mackee's suggestion wins it.

Also, in relation to the last few comments, the addition of item degradation hit micromanagement hard simply because there were no supporting changes made that would assist with auto-management of it. Not being able to sort stockpiled items by quality/wear, for example, massively impinges on one's ability to manage these things effectively without having to do it all oneself (which is a difficult and tiresome task). During early access/alpha development, one should expect new features to not work very well, at all, or only hotch-potch a fix over an issue that causes more unforeseen problems later down the line.

It'll all come out in the wash eventually, it just may take several cycles, lots of bleach and a prison labourer or several.

Here is my current colony, named "Turtlehead" for no reason whatsoever, as of sometime the other day, this week.

Effectiveness: Devastating

The primary improvement I would reccomend on this is to have all your repair people have shields - it would prevent explosive damage from certain mech types - and its also possible for a shot to go through diagonally through the V wall (which shields would protect).

I like though that it is simple.

It is effective enough, at least so far, that I can lock my colonists inside the main area and leave them go about their usual business. The turrets decimate the incoming raiders until they have had enough and leave. Then I'll release my colonists to repair whatever damage was caused.

I also forgot to mention that there's an orbital trade beacon under one of the chunks in the middle of the turrets. The idea here was that surprise drops coming in on the beacon would find themselves in the middle of the killbox. Lulz.

It's a lot better now than it used to be in A6 or so, but it's still pretty nasty if you need to shift a lot of one item.

[Pro-tip:]

On many an occasion I've found myself wondering why colonists are doing random things, usually finding out why by accident or through trial and error. I thought a collective thread of advice and tips for random stuff going on would be useful, and could also be used for general advice that might not be so obvious on the face of things. Let's start with one that had plagued me for ages until I figured it out last night;

Pro-tip: Can't figure out why colonists are wandering to random places when idle or binging? Check your tables; They have a "gather spot" that can be switched on or off, and idle/binging colonists will gather around tables with the gather spot on. Several small tables in close proximity (i.e. in a prison complex) will have a higher gathering affect than a single long table (i.e. one in your communal area), causing colonists to gather in the prison complex rather than where you want them.

And one that's simple, but easily overlooked;

Pro-tip: For efficient temperature management and happy colonists, set heaters to a few degrees lower than your coolers (I typically use 18 and 21). They will only heat and cool when outside of this temperature range and will idle when in it, using only 10W and 20W respectively. Note that larger rooms will require more heaters/coolers, especially during heat waves or cold snaps. Setting the coolers/heaters to the same temperature will cause both to run at full power as they're fighting each other.

Gear overview:

An additional tab showing the gear (and wear/quality) that colonists are wearing. Currently, one has to check each colonist in turn for a knackered clothing debuff and it's quite the tiresome task for large colonies and people with debuff/gear OCD. The overview could also feature a checkbox to set whether a warning appears on the right if a colonist is wearing knackered stuff.

Should be simple enough to do, all of the information is available, just needs some UI to display it.

EDIT: Also, I'm sure this has been suggested before, but wear shown on items when zoomed in as well as quality.

Definitely, with movement speed penalties for knackered or non-existent shoes.

Here is my current colony, named "Turtlehead" for no reason whatsoever, as of sometime the other day, this week.



Population: 9 or something
Food: All of it
Resources: Too much

Killbox:


It's a bit excessive:

The whole area is filled with marble chunks to slow attackers down. They also seem to afford some protection to the turrets, of which there are 18. You'll notice only a few are on.

Here's why:


Right from the get-go I knew I didn't want to be running power conduits through the middle of the killzone as they'd almost certainly be destroyed, so I ran conduit to the rear of the killbox to power most of the turrets. They run through switches so are only on when needed. The few that are on permanently connect to the conduit coming from the topmost geothermal generator, which will run them on its own. Sort of a backup, and those turrets being permanently on cover for random crazy things wandering in. The additional switches control the standing lamps, which are switched on when my colonists are drafted and ready, then switched off again when the shooting starts. Double wired for redundancy.

Colonist entrance:


6 plasteel doors. I've found that waves of psychotic animals will beat on the doors rather than go through the killbox, but moving all colonists into the killbox seems to pull most of them away from the doors. Keen eyed observers will have noticed the slag hiding in the chunks near the entrance to the killbox. A turret used to be there that I had not yet replaced. That softens up incoming raiders and kills many more when it inevitably explodes.

Effectiveness: Devastating

Well, more like broken and attempting to binge. The fact that they had alcohol, but they couldn't even get a sip was too much for those poor saps.

If that's going to be a thing then it should say "going cold turkey" or "need a fix". As it stands at the moment, it very much looks like a bug.