Messages

darkness effect was removed for balance.

It was INSANELY easy to simply roof your base and a couple tiles out so your pawns always fought in cover and in darkness.  The enemy pawns were in the open, and with the tiniest bit of extra effort, you could install lights in the base entrances so even at night you'd be crazily advantaged in combat.

If you add night vision gear and bring back the darkness effect, then you bring back the unbalance.  Everyone wouldn't have night vision gear, and the people that do would only make the unbalance worse, due to an influx of (likely very valuable) high tech gear.

.
I don't really see the issue with that, to be honest.  If that logic is to be followed, why not disallow sandbags, as you can use them to your advantage in combat if you plan your base well (surrounding turrets with them, for example)?  Or strategically placed walls?  Or using a dumping stockpile filled with stone chunks to impede an attacker's ability to quickly get close to your defenders or turrets?

The only way there can actually be the sort of balance this seems to imply is desired would be to remove the ability to build anything that could potentially be used for defense, and force the player to meet raiders in a completely empty field and fight there.  And then remove the player's ability to give directions to the pawns, as the player's skill would unbalance things in their favor.

Instead, why not leave that mechanic in, and give the AI the ability to shoot or otherwise destroy the lamps, or increase the reload time on weapons when doing so in the dark? And give some AI bases the same sort of lighting arrangement, when the player goes to raid them.  That is, improve the balance by adding realism, and turning intelligent planning back on the players, instead of by stripping out parts of the game and the player's ability to strategize.

Relatedly, I'd love to be able to assign beds to my prisoners.  That way I could order prisoners that need it into a prison hospital bed.

Basically, I would like to be able to tell one of my pawns to chase after and put out a fire on another pawn, so they don't get horribly burned.  While the idea itself is simple, I have no idea how hard it would be to implement, so I'm not putting it into the Cheap ideas thread.

I recommend incendiary mortars for these situations. You're in a Forrest biome, and could easily choke them in by starting a large fire to the south of the hive. If one of the bugs catches fire, they're likely to run around and catch their main hive on fire. It's not a perfect plan, but it's a lot more effective than going in and risking injury I think.

A good idea, and I'll remember that for if they respawn there before I finish filling the cave with wooden walls.  I still think that this shouldn't be something I need to worry about on flat terrain, though.

I get that insects are there to provide a risk for mountain bases. However, I would like to request that they be barred from spawning on terrain where mountain style bases are not possible, like here:



I had mined a small outcropping of rock for components, and this was the result.  This screenshot is after I had managed to kill off the main group of insects.  Those onscreen are the ones that spawned while I was recovering enough to make the final push (there were two), or spawned right as I launched my attack. If they are there as a threat to mountain bases, then fine, but they are far too powerful when not constrained by a mountain base's narrow tunnels and natural chokepoints.

Three suggestions that I think should be fairly cheap.

First, a persistent notification when a trade ship is in range.  This would be like the notifications for an ongoing weather effect, like an eclipse or a thunderstorm, not the "letter" notifications.  I often am not able to send someone to trade with a ship the instant they enter range, and often forget they were there until I get the notification that they left.  This would give an onscreen reminder that the option for trade is present, as there is currently no onscreen presence for them like there is for trade caravans.


Second, relations should not be strangers, with regards to stockpiles and similar allow lists.  If a family member of one of my pawns is a member of a hostile faction, and dies attacking my base in a raid, I would like for them not to get automatically cremated, if I have set it so only strangers get cremated, so I can instead bury them or place them in a sarcophagus (which I would like to be able to do without needing to adjust the settings on the sarcophagus.)


Third, adjust the blueprint "ghost" image for the grave to make it easier to see which end the headstone will be placed at.  My graveyard usually grows over time, and it often turns into a bit of a mishmash, as some graves unintentionally end up facing the opposite direction as the ones they are next to. 

A17, they're still doing it, but only sometimes.
His food is at 22%.
His mood is "Hungry -8"
He simply could not wait until the food got to the table, and ate it right in the fridge.

Do we have a fix for this yet?

I had the same thing happen in my A17 game, and got them to mostly stop by moving my table closer to my freezer. 


My dining room used to be the room I now have the hi tech research bench in, to the right of my kitchen.  The table was a small one, in the center of the room.  With the new setup my colonists eat off the floor in the freezer far less often, though they still do on occasion.

Similarly, a way to tell visitors not to open doors.  Or at least, a way to let them know that they really shouldn't open the door, as there's a pack of maneating ostriches outside.  You know, the ones I rescued you from? They haven't left yet.  You're still wounded from the last time you tried this, please, don't open the...  He opened the door.

Maybe some way for the AI to check to see if the outside is dangerous, when the visitor AI paths through a forbidden door?  That would keep the behavior that allows them to escape the player trying to trap them, while keeping them inside if the player has a good reason for locking those doors.

In order to fix that, stories would need a list of other stories they cannot roll anymore. Case by case, sadly. That would also mean that adding new stories would require to check whenever they work with everything else.

No it wouldn't.  It would just require an extra step after rolling the adult background, checking if any of the modifiers applied by that background are for a skill that is disabled by the childhood background.  If one is, then the adult background would be discarded and rerolled.

Why wouldn't you be able to cook in the fireplace? That's one of the main things they were historically used for.

Because that would negate the use of the fueled stove.

No it wouldn't.  If the fireplace is just an indoor campfire, it would only allow the creation of simple meals and pemmican.  Just like the campfire, you'd need the stove to make the better meals.  Personally, I'd have the fireplace be able to do one better than the campfire, and allow for fine meals as well, leaving lavish meals to the stovetops.

Why wouldn't you be able to cook in the fireplace? That's one of the main things they were historically used for.

Thanks!  I'm going to give that a try for my next game.

This is an example of one of my older A16 colonies. About 5 years in, and self-sustaining. No turrets necessary, playing on Cass Rough. You'll notice a lot of wood structures, mostly because I like the aesthetic of it To the north, you'll see the fortress getting an expansion, as more colonists are starting to join. Outer wall acts as a shield against wildfires and predators. The triple door entrance/gateway into the fortress made animal events pretty much null. Hallways along the outer wall offered a safe way for me to flank raiders, and that's including sappers. Multiple entrances and exits to most buildings, coupled with narrow alley ways, meant I was able to flank any hostile animals or raiders that managed to slip inside somehow. On Topic: I didn't suffer a single colonist death due to natural predators in this game. And I think I owe it all to the layout of the base.

Just wondering, how did you build up to that? None of my bases ever end up looking that nice.

I'd like a power switch setting for "turn on if someone is in the room" and "turn off if you are the only person in the room and are pathing out of the room".  That, or a motion sensor, that detects if a pawn is in the room.  The latter would probably be easier to program, and would be a sensible way to cut the power to a room if it isn't in use.

I'll second the suggestion of releasing a "16.5" opt in version via Steam's beta patch system.  Then, modders and players who want to play with the changes can choose to do so, while everyone else can keep using the current release without needing to do anything on their end.  This way you get the best of both worlds.