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Messages - starlight

#1
Ideas / More methods of getting new colonists
November 12, 2014, 12:37:42 AM
I have been a Kickstarter backer, and in the very first release the method of integrating colonists by making them prisoners made sense. It was, after all, an alpha release.

I played Alpha 7 sometime back, and loved all the additions since Alpha 1. The immersion loss from the prisoner issue is really jarring. (I didn't feel like taking them at all, resulting in a really small team).

Please provide other means, as well, of increasing the community size in Rimworld.
#2
Ideas / Re: Stacking for meals
March 21, 2014, 04:51:12 AM
Quote from: Monkfish on March 20, 2014, 09:42:30 PM
That would be the idea, yes, covering a 1x1 tile. I think a 10 meal capacity is a nice number, it's low enough that it doesn't just become a bottomless pit for meals, but large enough to be many times more convenient for food storage. A couple of these near the eating areas would likely be more than enough for your averaged sized colony.

I like the idea. Expandable on request.

While we are at it, what about containers for the rest of the stuff: bins, barrels, pots, bags, and the lot.

Would like to see a comprehensive set of containers rather than just one.
That lets you keep stockpiles, and the stuff in containers in the stockpiles.

(Very, very DF perspective......)
#3
Quote from: Architect on March 18, 2014, 08:10:19 AM
Quote from: Cala13er on March 18, 2014, 08:03:08 AM
That would be great! Any help is welcome. But don't you want to focus on your mod?

I do, but if your industrial craft, then I'm build craft, and they complimented each other very well in minecraft XD I wouldn't mind getting a similar interaction here a little further down the line when both our mods are a little more established?

I am all for adding more complexity to the industrial / building / economy parts of the simulation and not just to the weapons.
(Having weapons that are tiered, or require complex economies to be accessed would be interesting, though)

Hence, looking forward to more great versions of this mod  that have more things to do alongwith more alpha versions of Rimworld.

Just some sugggestions:
Vehicles
Automated Minecarts ('Men' with different graphics, and only hauling turned on)
Searchlights
A tiered economy starting with stone/wood and ending in nuclear power
#4
Ideas / Stacking for meals
March 20, 2014, 04:44:52 AM
Meals should stack in groups of more than one.
Otherwise stockpiles quickly fill up only with meals.
#5
Ideas / Integrating Mods into Mainline Rimworld
March 20, 2014, 04:33:33 AM
Hi,

I think mods make a lot of sense. There is also a vibrant community making mods.

However, there are a large number of mods making different kinds of changes. Some of these are changes that will *anyway* be needed in mainline Rimworld.

I am talking about things like a *wood economy*. Probably / hopefully the only reason it is not added it is because of lack of time from the dev.

Hence, I would like to suggest a sort of competition where the best mods that have content in line with the story / development focus of Rimworld get integrated with the mainline.

This lets everyone get the benefit.

If not, someone (I don't who!!) can make a mega-mod that brings together different mods.......or different people can come together to work on different parts of a mod.

#6
Ideas / Re: More In-depth electricity handling
March 20, 2014, 04:27:12 AM
Quote from: Architect on March 18, 2014, 09:28:41 AM
Quote from: Serrate Bloodrage on March 16, 2014, 03:02:33 AM
Could probably add a 1W power consumption to coduit and metal walls to act like impedance

I might try that out. You'll know if the game is still fun if it turns up in BetterPower+ XD

That is a nice idea.
#7
Ideas / Re: Campaigns and Scenarios
March 20, 2014, 04:25:29 AM
Quote from: keylocke on March 18, 2014, 04:57:03 PM
i really don't like the notion of starting your base again from scratch at the end of each scenario after reaching an arbitrary goal for each scene.

as a counter-proposal, how about adding colony wishlists instead (similar to sims3 wishlists). and each time the colonists complete a positive wish, they get a temporary boost in happiness. while completing negative wishes will get a temporary boost in fear.

sample positive wishes would be : create a new bedroom, reach X number of colonists, survive X number of raids, etc..
sample negative wishes would be : build a new gibbet cage, torture a prisoner, reach X number of prisoners, etc.

this would give temporary goals that the players could aim for (similar to a campaign style setting), without forcing them to start again from scratch after each scenario.

edit : more importantly, wishlists (rather than campaign scenarios) would preserve the sandbox elements of the game.

Most games that have campaigns / scenarios also have a sandbox mode.
Currently Rimworld has *only* sandbox. I am just saying that adding campaign editors and giving them to the community would create additional content.

I also think the above ideas that you have put in are good.
They can be implemented independent of campaigns or along with them also.
#8
Ideas / Re: Group orders
March 20, 2014, 04:22:51 AM
Quote from: Plasmatic on March 19, 2014, 09:38:59 PM
Not sure if its a bug or just not thought of yet.

Currently, you cannot give any orders if you select more than one colonist, now this doesn't mean much for undrafted colonists as only one can be working on any one building at a time..

But I'd like to the ability to select 3 or 4 colonists and tell them to focus fire without selecting each one individually..

Shift selecting is easy, but currently pointless aside from moving your colonists to a new place.

This could even be expanded with undrafted colonists.. Maybe you are building a wall and you want it built ASAP. if you prioritize it currently you only prioritize one block of the wall.
If you multi select, one colonist would take the piece you actually did select, but the others would then find the nearest piece and work on that. this way if you select four colonists you could prioritize four blocks at a time.

Same goes for picking up resources, rarely can one colonist carry all the supplies dropped in a crash, if you multiselect they would all take a bit each, they would take all of whatever you had selected first, but the rest of the colonists would act as general haulers looking for anything within 25 blocks or something..

Obviously this isn't a high priority, nor do I expect it to be.

I just hope it makes sense the way i describe it.

Makes a lot of sense from a gameplay point of view.
Not having to micro people all the time is great.
#9
Quote from: StorymasterQ on March 17, 2014, 08:15:38 PM
Just be lucky it's not a message window system.
"Vas shot Raider A"
"Raider A received 12 damage."
"Raider A has died."


...

Who's up for Rimworld RPG?

I would actually like a Window like this.  Neverwinter Nights Nostalgia (NNN). Was bad there coz of too many messages.

Note that DF has very detailed combat logs, but a message window would be really cool. Would let you look at it *while* the action was happening.
#10
Ideas / Re: Management, Leadership, and Roles
March 18, 2014, 08:07:24 AM
Quote from: Kirid on March 18, 2014, 07:39:40 AM
Any space captain I've ever seen is usually barking into a comms system at some point, and strolling around control rooms with seemingly important tasks.
These are just ideas to try to break the nobles system mold to fit Rimworld a little more.
These might work better with a fog of war and a more dangerous world, but could function without

Head of Personnel, Psychiatrist, or one of captains main jobs. Every colonist notifies the leader/HoP before leaving the colony home zone, who has a sort of staff roster. Some colonists might wander off by themselves and get killed and the leader wouldnt know until not seeing them for 12-24 hours, in which he would start looking for them. Also tells low happiness colonists to take a break, or lazy ones to get back to work. (I imagine eventually some colonists will be slackers while others might work themselves too hard)

Comms officer role. Upkeeps trade comms and radars. This role could work on boosting your comms to get more trades, like sending an advertisement planet-wide instead of just relying on passer-bys; This would also be a dinnerbell for raiders I imagine. The radar works like the "raiders are preparing for an attack."  If the console isn't manned properly, you might get false warnings, or no warning at all. If you had a larger colony with a good radar person and machine, you could get a warning like "unknown ship spotted in orbit above colony" for those new drop-in raiders, which would be impossible to spot and deadly otherwise.

I like the idea of a "military control room".

You would appoint a Lieutenant  to start with, and then make him General. Similar progression to the details described in my hospital post above

Small Control Room: 1 Comms console
Medium Control Room: 2 Comms console - lets you equip colonists with 2-way talkies. Without them, there is a small chance that they will get kidnapped by raiders. (Now that is a way to make raiders more interesting)

Other things that could happen here would be fitting out expeditions to go and raid other colonies. (Or maybe that is a separate building that requires having a control room first).
#11
Ideas / Campaigns and Scenarios
March 18, 2014, 05:03:44 AM
One of the foundational features of a good game is that it breaks content into tiers and gives the player something to aspire to.

Any standard game like Age of Empires or a brilliant City-Builder like Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom has a progression in that the starting campaigns are easy and gradually get more difficult.

In that content, I would like to propose:
1. A tutorial / campaign system: Tynan only needs to program the modding / creation capabilities into the game, the actual campaign content can be built by the community and the best ones made part of the official game package
So the tutorial would include stuff like:
1. Get X people
2. Build A, Build B

while the campaigns would get custom maps, custom raiders, and specific goals like save X amount of money, etc.

You could have individual scenarios, or a group of them for a campaign.

This is not necessary and is a very different vision from a DF-style game, but will add structure.
#12
Ideas / Re: The ability to plan
March 18, 2014, 04:57:15 AM
Quote from: keylocke on March 18, 2014, 01:14:01 AM
Quote from: Plasmatic on March 17, 2014, 01:13:00 PMit should be automined by colonists as you may not want all of it set to be mined right away?

You could be planning your entire base of 50 colonists when you only have 3.. that way you can plan the whole base, but only mine/construct the bits you need as you need them.

Bedrooms are a great example of this..



edit : ^exactly this.

i also pause the game when i am laying down blueprints for construction. however, as i said before. i also have to factor in the available resources and manpower for building those blueprints.

ie : at the start of the game, i often plan out several layers of defenses to surround my steam generator, as well as plotting out the living areas, the kitchen and dining areas, etc heading towards the nearest mountainside.. however, since the available resources aren't enough to complete the entire base design. i have to cancel out the rooms and equipment that i don't want the colonists to start building yet. so what i usually do is i just keep the corners of the rooms as markers so i would know the placement of rooms as i have originally intended, and then lay down the entire blueprints again for those areas i've deleted when i finally have the resources necessary to build them. (generally when i start a new game, i tend to have already designed practically the entire base on the first day)

-what i would prefer instead is to be able to lay down the blueprints... and then pause the construction for each item individually, so that it would be easier for me to guide the colonists on what to prioritize building first without having to micromanage the builders.

-edit2 : it would be better if there would be an option to set the default construction status to "paused" and then the player will turn it on manually instead.

-----

it's kinda hard to explain. (that's why i was asking for a good movie cap software in another thread so i can show some experiments on base design). haha

It would be great to be able to save blueprints from the game, to import them later. This particularly works for "generic stuff" like bedrooms.
(a la Quickfort in DF)
#13
Quote from: OnyxShadow on March 15, 2014, 05:16:42 PM
Right now the ways to improve morale are few and only provide relatively small amounts of joy to combat the rather large negative factors. It would be nice if we could trade resources/time to improve this.

To me one of the most obvious solutions is the choice of how hard to work the colonists. Work them hard and get stuff done faster at the cost of happiness or take more breaks (even days off) to put everyone in a good mood.

Beyond that, maybe let us provide alcohol (oh no, Mike is having a drunken rampage) or snacks, better furniture, and exotic dancers!  ;D

It would be nice to have some kind of *drink* added to the diet. Doesn't have to be alcohol, though that could be one of the options.

What I propose is:
1. Water. Currently missing from the game. Adds lot of depth / changes apart from adding realism.
You get water tiles: rivers, streams, pools. (Doesn't have to flow - graphics not important, can come later)
You can build bridges across them.
You can have swimming as a skill to check who can cross them.
You can add boats
You can have fishing as a means of obtaining food.

You can make a moat and fill it with acid / poison water yikes.........
#14
Ideas / Re: More In-depth electricity handling
March 18, 2014, 04:47:40 AM
Quote from: porcupine on March 14, 2014, 11:53:37 AM
I haven't touched Alpha 2 yet, but with every game in Alpha 1, one of the major components is obviously electricity.

I see a lot of opportunity for "cheap" incremental improvements to these systems, based on reality:

-  Batteries should have efficiency multipliers, power in != power out.  You're always going to loose power when storing it, vs. using it live.
--  To expand on this, rapid discharge of batteries will result in quicker depletion vs. long slow discharges (when talking standard SLA batteries, which is presumably what they'd be using).  This could be calculated by considering battery capacity vs. current draw to come up with efficiency on discharge, something simplistic/linear [or exponential until short/depletion?]/whatnot.
--  Overcharging batteries generally results in bad things (fire/explosion/etc.), which could either be taken as the rapid influx of power, or the sustained charging of full units (for the later, that's no longer a "cheap" improvement since then you need a heatsink or something else to selectively vent excess power)
--  Deep cycling batteries/over-discharging could result in damage to the batteries.
-  Conduit/electrical wires should have an associated impedance for pushing power through.  If you run your solar panels on one side of the map, and the batteries/consumption on the other, you're going to be loosing power along the way, measurable amounts.
-  Potentially "expensive", but if power conduits knew how much was running through them (say with all available paths being equal), they could have rated capacities, and be more likely to short/fire when you approach/exceed capacity.  It's not realistic that a single power conduit can carry an entire colonies power after all, right?

None of these would really require a player to change the way they play, learn new behavior, etc., but would add certainly add depth, and effectively reward creative/logical configurations.

While this adds more *realism*, I am not sure how much it would add to the depth of gameplay, except for the "Heat Sink" idea from above is nice.

With electricity, what I would really like is:
1. For lamps to have sensors so that only switch on when someone is around.
2. Or their wattage cost to be brought down - right now it seems too high compared to say a sun lamp for hydroponics.

In other words, differentiate between items that consume power at a industrial level, and those that are consumer-level.

2. As an extension of the above idea, have "rated capacities" for power conduits. They should be fine for a fledgling colony requirements say upto 2000W (just a random number, subject to balance).
If you want more power than that to be passed through any single tile, then you will need to upgrade that to a higher capacity line.

This will introduce the tiered economy progression that I believe is fundamental to any  city-builder, rpg, or any game for that matter (sword > barbed sword > large sword > large and barbed sword, etc).

It also introduces a design aspect that will challenge users that will let the truly creative people come up with designs to put on the forums / wiki for other people to use.
The other change, while realistic, do not require much intervention on the part of the user.
#15
Ideas / Re: Management, Leadership, and Roles
March 18, 2014, 04:30:32 AM
Quote from: James009 on March 17, 2014, 02:03:32 AM
I feel like one thing that Rimworld is missing is a "noble" system from Dwarf Fortress. For example, at the beginning your best leader (highest social skill) or colonist should be designated as the Expedition Leader. This guy (or gal) would help to keep unhappy colonists sane and would have a buff against going insane himself. This guy could also have a cool control room or desk to sit at on his free time (we need more flavor!).

You could also have roles such as:
- Chief Medical Officer- Is designated as the main medic and is also responsible for stocking Medbay (when we have a medical zone for healing injured). Gives a bonus (based on medical skills) to all healing.
- Chief Science Officer- The designated Scientists who helps oversee R&D. Gives a bonus (based on research skills) to all research projects.
- Warden- You can specifically designate one person as the Warden (can have a staff of Baliffs or prison guards to help).
- Head of Security- Appoint a primary defender who can help bolster defenses. Gives a bonus (based on combat skills) to all people fighting in a radius. Can conduct patrols around the base in off-time (we need patrols).
- Psychiatrist- Appoint a person to help with sanity issues of your colonists. Helps with re-recruiting friendly prisoners and preventing people who are unhappy from breaking.
- Chief Engineer- Is the main person in charge of construction, maintenance, and repair projects. Gives a bonus (based on construction and repair skills) to all building and repair actions.

Only certain colonists could become certain roles, they'd have to be well skilled and able to perform the function. However, being appointed to these roles would make them happier and give them a bit more respect from within the community.

Anyways, I'm sure we could come up with a ton more unique roles that you could have in your little outpost. Things such as Assassins, Courtesans, Merchants and Traders, and Soldiers would be welcomed additions. The number of roles available can also scale with the size and population of your outpost unlocking more options over time.

From here you could go wild and implement defensive squads, medical teams, and a command structure with your base... however deep you want to get with it. If you use the options you have a bit few more features, if you don't then you simply don't.

I agree that "nobles" would help. I would call them officers, though.

They would have requirements - not artificial ones like mandates in DF.

Rather,
Emergency Medical Officer: needs *first aid area* (1 bed, 1 non-dedicated colonist, medical supplies kit)
Medical Officer: *small* hospital (1 bed, 1 dedicated colonist who does not work on anything else, medicines, sutures, casts)
Sr. Medical Officer: *medium* hospital (3 Beds, 1 dedicated Medical Officer under him, 1 non-dedicated nurse, ICU area, heart-lung compressor, hygiene controls, more machines, etc)
Chief Medical Officer: *large* hospital (3 Beds, 1 dedicated Medical Officer under him, 1 dedicated nurse, ICCU area, heart-lung compressor, anti-infection controls)

Note that it should be possible to have 3 Beds and still not have a large hospital, the above are *AND* conditions.

Further:
1. Hospitals should provide benefits to healing faster. More from small, medium, large with progressive benefits.
Ailments should be specific - bleeding, fracture, infection, etc.

2. There should be requirement also for the Medical officer to be promoted:
A. Research using books
B. Books themselves to be obtained


the above would, of course, be defined by the game.
1 no of beds
X equipment
etc, etc

Really nice extra (of course, comes with extra programming) would be to have addable modules in it like Simcity.
So start a hospital with 2 beds, then right-click on it to add 2 more.