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2 state fog of war. Explored/Unexplored

No line of site fog of war, to reduce performance issues.

Unexplored fog of war is not opaque, some transparencies (either brightness or fuzziness). You can still see where things outside your camp take place, just not exactly the events that unfold.

Day 15- We could hear distant battles taking place to the north of our camp. We know we were just scanned out by some pirate signals, so that might have been them. Maybe they had a mutiny, we might have to explore the area to find out what happened, then again it might be too dangerous not knowing if it was all a ruse to get us to come out. On another note, the animals have been acting strange. Some of the muffalos have been showing aggression for no real reason. We've stepped up our defenses to keep them at bay, not to mention if those raiders are still around.

Day 18- The raiders never came to our doorstep and now we decided to make a scout party to try and find out what happened. Pirates are enough to be worried about, but if they were killed than we need to know what did it. There could be survivors too, and maybe if we save them, they might be inclined to join us, it never hurts to have another helping hand.

Day 21- Our scout party moved north to try and get some more information to the whereabouts of the pirates, we found a body, along with a sniper rifle. I guess they must have left in a hurry to leave that behind. He looked like he might have been trampled, most likely from a muffalo.

Day 22- Andy is dead. On our way back from investigating what happened to the pirates, a muffalo caught us by surprise. Andy was the first to get hit. We put the mad beast down, and tried to bring Andy back to camp, but he lost too much blood and died. Rest in peace my friend.

Probably for the best. Then again, I wouldn't mind alpha testing a game where the chance isn't there to see what would happen.

If in Alpha10 there is a "Fun" bar then this kind of job would have to only be for the steadfast and strongwilled. Being that they could handle Guarding without going crazy, maybe unless they are psychos are massos. This is true in real life (8 years infantry, guard sucks and you will go crazy sometimes), and will make you have to choose carefully about who does the guard duty and forces you to make challenging decisions: "Well this guy is my best miner, but he is also the least likely to go crazy on guard duty." Which in turn adds depth to the game.

As to your guard toggle:
If in Alpha10 there is a "Fun" bar then this kind of job would have to only for the steadfast and strongwilled. Being that they could handle Guarding without going crazy. This is true in real life (8 years infantry, guard sucks and you will go crazy sometimes), and will make you have to choose carefully about who does the guard duty and forces you to make challenging decisions: "Well this guy is my best miner, but he is also the least likely to go crazy on guard duty." Which in turn adds depth to the game.

this is the wrong thread though. I'll repost in the other so don't reply to this here. Lets keep the flow going on Battle Stations in this thread.

I guess this suggestion is mostly to make the game feel more deep rather than just strictly utilitarian game features.

HOWEVER one function of the Guard could be to set boundaries for your people. In other words, he/she doesn't just guard what is trying to get in, he could guard them from going out. For instance if someone was drunk and wandering off, the guard would stop them to socialize and then "arrest" them so they don't wander off drunk. This could be the same for broken colonists. If you don't have a guard setup then you can still micromanage events like that, but having the guard could be a realistic and USEFUL feature.

In this way you could go more of an evil colony where the people aren't happy but sadistic guards don't mind keeping them in check. It's martial law time!

Which is why you put it low on the priorities list. If there is nothing else to do, then they could at least guard.

Anyone who played age of empires 2 remembers the town center bell, best feature ever.

It is very likely that in any survival scenario Guard Duty or "Fire watch" would be a big priority, especially while you are getting established.

Create a "Guard" order for the colonists (like mine, except it doesn't wear off).

Create a Guard task in the overview (i'd say place it just before hauling in the priorities list).

Then you would just click the Guard order on a tile to turn it into a Guard Post.

If a colonist has the Guard task turned on, he/she will take up that selected post until another task of higher priority presents itself. Any colonist that is guarding will automatically shoot hostiles within their range, or if melee set a base melee engage range (and have them return to their post after the threat is gone).

To go even further and make it more complicated, you could have characters with Warden task turned on actually bring food out to characters that are guarding. Guards that fall asleep could fall victim to kidnapping. Guards that spend too much time Gaurding get moody or turn homicidal.

I guess what I mean is, this is really a "qaulity of life" improvement. You made it exactly that, where I'm saying not just make it a "quality of life" improvement, make it an interactive game feature to help add depth.

From a devs point of view its starting to get a bit complicated to implement. I wanted to try and keep it simple so it could be something that wouldnt take too much time to code.

So I would like it if what is in my first post was implemented, just to have the ability to do so. Then as time goes on all these other things could be added in.

That said, I don't like the whole "farming zone" idea. I think without it there is more freedom for creativity, if the animals just behaved in a certain way based on the if/then statements you could create what would be a farming zone anyway from the mechanics, and that I feel is much more rewarding than just following along a predetermined code. It's kind of like buying the color green versus only having blue and yellow and figuring out you can mix it to make green. Growing zones are explainable because you cultivate the land to do that. For animals though I just don't see it. You can't really tell a cow, "this is where you mate and make babies," it just does so if you give it the right conditions. Kind of like working with game mechanics for an expected response.

Another example of what I mean is like creating airlocks. You work with the game mechanics for a desired outcome, there isn't just a door called an airlock that does it for you.

In regard to animals overrunning the map.... The Purge!

...but yeah percentage chance might be better.. or predation or intraspecies violence! 50% chance to mate 50% chance to fight to the death (that's like reality anyway lol).

mmm yes.. fences. Make "mad" animal torpedo shoots...

or just lamely corralling animals for meat.

Yeah I understand your contribution, I just wanted to suggest something that was part of the gameplay environment instead of just a hot key for it.

I'm a purest when it comes to games, so Modding is out of the question for me. It's a slippery slope to cheating (not fact, just my opinion). Plus I feel an ingame item that triggers the function would be necessary to keep some of the reality and their should be a bit of a price for the convenience (constructing the trigger). Plus an item allows for possibly infinite amounts of customization, if you read what I wrote about making it more complex in the original post.

Assign fauna specific mating season periods (like growing seasons) and a "territory" value.

If:
Two animals of the same species are in range of one another's "territory" values within the specified mating season,
Then:
They produce one (or an amount dependent on a set RNG value for each species) offspring.

If:
The conditions are not met,
Then:
Nothing happens.

If:
The conditions are met, but either of the pair have already mated this year,
Then:
Nothing happens.

If:
The conditions are met, but either of the two animals were "born" this year,
Then:
Nothing happens.

Example:
Boar have a "territory" value set to 6, and a mating season of April. If two boar cross paths within 6 tiles apart during the month of April, they will produce another boar. Their offspring cannot mate this year, nor can the mates, until next April.

If in the future you want to make it more complex, you can add an RNG role for frustration and going mad that is connected to mated season. For instance, if an animal does not mate within 5 years, it goes mad. Than you can remove the "animal goes mad" events from the storyteller and make it more natural to the environment. People could then even go as far as inducing animals into violent behavior by exploiting the mechanics and using them as weapons. It would be interesting.