Messages

No, it affects nothing at this time.  Including the direction they come from.

The world map position doesn't affect raids or traders at all.

Glad you like the game though!

+1 for sourced information!
-Stigma

I don't know - and I have been wondering the same.

While buthered meat on the ground just vanishes after it expires (and thus can't be rotten) - there is something that happens to animal carcasses.... The carcass itself will become putrified after a few days in the sun - but it still exists in the world for a long time. (happens often after predators leave kills half-eaten).

I don't know what happens if you try to butcher a rotten animal carcass... I would have to test. You may get usable leather + rotten meat?

-Stigma

CCL asks you if you want to restart the game after messing with mods for a VERY GOOD reason, due to the way mods are loaded, sometimes its necessary to reload the game to make them work correctly.

I still reload the whole game every time I go into the mods menu. Is this no longer a necessary step?

With the core community mod thing installed it will automatically tell/ask you to restart anytime you change the mods. If you allow it to do so then it does it for you.

Without it then you get no such message - and you will have to do so manually.

-Stigma

I made the default area for all my pawns, called "safe", without any trap tiles.
But it seems stupid that you'd have to tell them not to trip their own traps.

Ideally the game should just not have your pawns trip traps at all.


Shame though about traps, they're so insanely effecient at killing endless hordes of anything.. and can pretty much never be avoided by the AI in assault

That's not so hard to intelligently nerf in a sensible way though. Just make it so that any enemy who sees an ally activate a trap gains a say... 70-80% chance to detect and avoid stepping on other traps in a short radius around the one that just activated, but also incurs a fairly significant movement debuff. Basically that enemy goes "Holy shit! Jim is down! This area is clearly boobytrapped and I need to step carefully!". But of course, even being careful, he might still miss one and get hit himself - but at least he won't just ignore the threat and charge ahead into a minefield where he saw 5 of buddies JUST get killed by traps.

In terms of gameplay this would heavily nerf cheeze-tactics like long corridors of traps, or other methods employing mass amounts of traps in chokepoints. The first guy goes in and gets trapped and now his buddies understand the threat and are much less likely to fall victim themselves.

On the other hand it would not nerf more appropriate and "natural" use of traps. A trap here and there to wound incoming enemies will still take them off-guard, you just can't rely on 20 traps all in one area to take them all out. Also they should be quite efficient in "minefields" - not so much to do massive damage, but to "scare" the attackers and slow them down when they realize they need to step carefully.

It also makes more expensive traps more worthwhile - as it allows you to pack more of a punch in a single hit now that spacing them out is more important, so steel traps would be ideal for trying to significantly wound the enemy, but lots of simple wooden ones would be great for a deterrent minefield where you rely on the deterrence more so than the damage they do.

-Stigma

I absolutely agree!

This should apply to basically anything that is constructed - ie. if you try to build something on something that is already built then the game will just queue DECONSTRUCT -> BUILD X to be done for you. That way you could reconstruct, redecorate or repurpose rooms all in one go - instead of having to deconstruct/uninstall everything - wait for that job to complete (which could take a while depending on circumstances) and then having to do/remember to do the new work when you aren't blocked anymore.

This really breaks the flow of the game and is one of those quality-of-life things that would really help make the game feel polished and less annoying. I can't see any good reason for NOT having this feature.

-Stigma

From what's been said before, no. Though I do believe that direction does affect which side of the map they come

This fits with the few scattered pieces of information I've seen while searching. I'm not at all sure if this info is up to date, and none of it had any sources to it though. I guess I will take it as a working assumption that the info is correct. Thanks for your input.

-Stigma

I've done some basic testing and it seems that colonists do indeed need their own table-space to "eat of a table".

I believe I have observed that 2 people can share a chair though - but not under all circumstances. I think if both want to use the chair to eat then it works, but if one is using it to relax while the other wants to eat then it is reserved by the relaxer and thus blocked for use.

In short, I wouldn't try to skimp too hard on the chairs and tables - but having a few of your chairs next to more than one table surface can only help - and is probably a good idea to do if you have one or two really high quality chairs (since they can potentially see double use sometimes that way).

Oh, and remember that colonists won't trek across the map to eat in your fancy dining hall. If they are really hungry and have food nearby or on them (they often carry meals as lunch if you make those) they will rather eat from the ground than travel super far (which is logical and more optimal work efficiency anyway). Just keep this in mind, and consider having a small basic eating spot with a basic stool or two near areas away from your base which are frequently visited and worked at (distant farming plots, logging areas, perhaps even one near your front-line for fighters and returning hunters).

I can definitely confirm that chairs CAN be shared by crafters - so again, if you have a great chair sandwiched between 2 crafting stations that see a lot of use then that's not a bad idea as it keeps both crafters very comfortable while working.

I might also mention that the orientation of chairs seems to be purely aesthetic - your colonists don't care if they sit backwards or sideways. (all the cool kids sit on chairs backwards anyway .... or maybe that was just the 80's ..??)

-Stigma

It does seem like the extreme mental breaks are a little over-tuned.

What I mean by that is that murderous rampages can happen a little too easily. It's fine that sad colonists get dazed and zone out (that's a minor penality for being under the threashold, which is fair), but from that point it seems you like you are often only a hairs breadth from them going totally self-destructive and literally murder your other colonists - and that seems extreme. It seems like this should only happen under the most dire circumstances - and after some sustained stress.

It doesn't help that once this happens it often turns into a sharply downward morale spiral that can tear apart even a well established and otherwise stable colony.

I don't know the details of how the code works for this, but maybe the most extreme mood-disorders should need some time to build up (prolonged bad mood) before they have a significant chance to go off. Right now it seems that even a minor dip into a threshold has some flat chance of setting off a tantrum.

I recently had a run that ended before it began because a colonist insulted another in the first 5 seconds of landing, resulting in a social fight, which nearly killed one of them and left the other very wounded and in pain causing bad moods all around. Shortly after they had all started fighting eachother and going completely insane before being able to even construct a bedroom. Very funny ... but only because I had no investment at that point ...

-Stigma

Hey all,

Quick question - does proximity (on the world map) to other factions matter at all? Are you likely to recieve more visitors/raiders from friendly/hostile factions if they are physically closer to your colony?

With the hospitality mod (highly recommended by the way) I rather enjoy having plenty of visitors and traders come by to mix things up and not feel totally isolated from the rest of the world, but if the distance doesn't matter at all then at least I can stop re-rolling generated maps to find acceptable settlement locations close to tribes and outworlder towns... Hopefully someone can clarify this for me

-Stigma

[Updated to 1.2.0]

Updated to 1.2.0

Aww yeah, there it is, folks. While I was at it, I re-added the custom loading messages for that extra bit of sass.
Enjoy, and I trust you will report any issues you may find.

Nice! Does this work with the A14 version of prepare carefully?
I feel that is a question that is pretty relevant to ask since these mods obviously synergize for those who like more control.

-Stigma

If you seek to limit explosions you will need walls, as explosions go over passable cover.
Those walls should probably be stone. Wood and even steel will go down fairly fast to that level of damage.

-Stigma

Wildlife in 14a can avoid traps (it developed spider sense during evolutionary process I believe) and apparently can stay invisible in front of security turrets.

It is a bit strange how nobody reacts at all when a pack of wild panthers stroll into your base and start stalking your pets. By the time you get notified the damage is done.

It would be useful to have a "hostility zone" or something like that where you can define that "when animals X,Y,Z step into this area - treat them as hostile". Maybe for balance purposes require that predators must be seen by an actual colonists so they still have some chance to sneak in. Otherwise sentry-turrets might trivialize this a bit.

Another way would be to have some function that you can set up to generate a "letter" alert whenever X,Y,Z animals are spotted by colonists - then you can deal with them as you see fit.

I think we want jungles to be dangerous in it's fauna, but at the same time predators near the home-zone should cause some level of alarm. Otherwise the only real option is to lock away all smaller animals completely behind walls because even very attentive players will not catch all the wandering predators manually.

-Stigma

You can remove these tiles from the allowed zone.

Great idea. Still unnecessarily micro-intensive for something that really ought to be automatic.
Maybe pawns should just treat traps as impassable tiles.

-Stigma

Mutineer, thanks for the advice - but I think maybe you misunderstood me a little. I was looking for information very specifically to the "room role" system. Other than that your advice is very good though, so thanks for answering.

B0rsuk, thank you - but what you mention there are sort of the parts I know about already. Can you have hybrid rooms? Can you self-sabotage your potential mood bonuses from rooms by having "inappropriate" types of furniture in those rooms?

From the reading I've done on the forums and other places since I made the initial post I kind of suspect that rooms can only have one "type", so hybrid rooms can't get bonuses for both. Seems like different furniture score differently for certain types of rooms, so essentially if you put too many joy items in your diningroom rather than more tables it may eventually switch from counting as a dining room and turn into a recroom.

I'm going to try experimenting with more tables in a diningroom and see if I can avoid it turning into a kitchen from a stove or production bench also being present - as those roomtypes AFAIK can't have any mood bonuses and are thus pretty undesireable as a role I think... If I am understanding it right.

-Stigma

Hey all,

The room system is new to me. Either it got added recently, or I never knew it existed before... and I'm having a hard time understanding it.

Firstly, what game-mechanics function does it serve? Is it only to make "impressive dining room" ect. bonuses possible, or does it have other uses than this?

Secondly, what are the rules for what a room gets designated as? The wiki says that a table is required for a dining hall, and a crafting table for a workshop - but what happens when these conflict, such as having both in the same room? In a quick one-time test when I tried it got set to a workshop despite having loads of eating areas, and apparently workshops have "no demands" ... does this mean that I am effectively gimping the potential of a beautiful dining by having any crafting stations there and I need very specialized rooms? Even just a stove in the room (a logical thing for an eating area) does the same thing by designating it as a kitchen.

Am I forced to choose between sharing one good large room or specialize it to get a bonus but then having crafters and cooks spend their time in cramped working areas? (or else spend a huge area for worksshops and kitchens that is 95% empty space...)

I hope someone can fill me in on how this works, and maybe also give me some basic strategies for optimizing. Thanks!
-Stigma