Messages

It's true that Cannibals prefer their food raw and it gives a +20 boost when compared against the +15 for meal based cannibalism, but it's important to remember that the nutritional value of meals is higher than that of raw food, so colonists must eat quite a bit more of any raw food to satiate their hunger.

Because meat is not a renewable resource in the same way that vegetables are, the only way to get the most out of your meat is to reserve them exclusively for fine meals. Since fine meals require an animal product and simple meals don't, it's almost pointless to waste your animal products on simple meals because you have to use twice as much and you're really just wasting a valuable resource. This is even more important for human meat which is even less readily available without huge consequences to colony mood and global faction goodwill. (Thraxon's 100% human meat simple meal is hugely wasteful)

I've found the best solution for the current lack of cannibal specific meal is to set up a separate Fine Meal bill for Cannibal use, set it to "do this many times" instead of "do until you have X" and instruct colonists to drop those meals directly on the floor, then I set the meals so colonists won't interact with them (select the meal and press F)

After that, whenever my cannibal is hungry I try to manually instruct them to eat the designated cannibal meal. It's pretty tedious, so hopefully a better solution presents itself one day.

There's another topic in the suggestions board about capturing animals for trade, and it gave me an idea for something related but different regarding trapping small animals

The current hunting mechanics are notoriously inefficient for hunting small animals thanks to the aim penalty for target size and also the hunting AI keeping targets at the absolute maximum possible distance, and when left on their own even skilled hunters will often spend a ridiculous amount of time shooting at (and missing) small hunting targets. Combine this with the very small meat yield and it makes it almost pointless to hunt small animals unless you absolutely have to, but I'm of the opinion that game elements should not be ignored simply because they're poorly designed, quite the opposite in fact I believe bad elements should be redesigned or improved to make themselves viable.

For that I propose the Animal Trap, a small, non lethal cage made of steel that can be used to trap any animal that can fit inside of a wooden animal sleeping box. The player would build the trap from within the Furniture menu and wait until a small animal stumbles inside of it, and then a notification would alert the player to animals caged in traps. It would be up to the player to designate whether to slaughter or release the animal (mostly for releasing boomrats), at which point it would be a hunters responsibility to deal with the animal and re-arm the trap.

In order for this to be a viable but not overly reliable method of acquiring meat and fur, traps would have to be entirely passive and free from player influence. The only thing that would increase the chances of trapping an animal would be the number of traps on the map, as more traps mean more chances for animals to become trapped.

I think this would be a better use of small animals as a meat and fur resource, and it would also allow the player a secondary source of meat without having to stop and check the map every few minutes to see if any animals are worth hunting.

The one flaw I see for something like this is trapping an animal would have 0 influence from a colonists shooting skill, and also trapping an animal would not increase the relevant skills in any way, so its possible that animal trapping could be something completely unrelated to hunting all together. Either way I think a better option for trapping small animals is needed, most of the time they just end up being food for larger animals anyway.

"Sweet Tooth" sounds like it could easily be treated the same as drug addiction, with a declining "sweet tooth" meter resulting in a cranky colonist who is suffering from chocolate withdrawal. The only problem is chocolate is far too uncommon so sweet tooth would effectively be a debuff.

Since a vast amount of the interaction of the game is experienced through bills/storage buttons, it would be nice if there was a shortcut key to press or a modifier key to hold (or a menu option) to automatically open up the Bills or Storage menu on a selected workbench or stockpile. For example, maybe holding Left Alt while selecting a Butchering Table opens the info box for the stove with the Bills menu already expanded, so the player can quickly add to the "Butcher Creature" task without having to do extra work. (I chose this because it's one I manually interact with frequently)

I especially like this idea for large colonies where it takes a long time to get from one side of the map to the other, having guards posted near the edge of the colony would help prevent the raider wave from overwhelming the defenses before colonists arrive to help defend. Colonists on guard duty could also function as look-outs, giving the colony advanced warning of an incoming raid before the raiders appear on the map, something similar to the warning you get when a wanderer calls out over the radio that they're being chased

I love this idea, I love the multi-faceted use of the artifacts so that the player still has a choice in how they're used. It reminds me a bit of choosing which boss weapon to forge in Dark Souls.

The possibilities are endless and there could be artifacts to assist with any number of colony tasks/needs. Imagine an artifact that emits a powerful light, that could be turned into a brilliant lamp that would illuminate a very large area (placed at the center of a colony to keep the outdoors lit at all times) or turned into a gorgeous piece of spectral artwork that is so magnificent to behold that it surpasses the beauty and impressiveness of any other art piece in the game

A stone that radiates a soothing heat which can be crafted into a statue that prevents the temperature from falling below a certain level in a large area, or can be built into an industrial stove to rapidly speed up/increase cooking output

A similar stone but cold, that could be used to prevent the temperature from escalating too high or used to prevent fires.

My examples aren't as well thought out as yours but the concept of "this or that" is very strong. I think what's important is that artifacts like these be so useful that it doesn't matter which one you get or how you choose to use it, it will always be helpful.

I like the idea of pawns having separate drafted/undrafted clothing assignments, so when you draft a pawn their first instinct is to run to the nearest equipment racks and change their outfits/pick up their weapons. (I also think pawns should only carry weapons when drafted but that's another topic for another day)

I just don't really see the point honestly, if new colonists find the worn down ruins of your old base they're just going to sweep and repair everything and within a few minutes you'll just be picking up where you left off but with new untrained pawns. It's effectively the same as leaving the base intact because very little will change, and it functions as a player handicap, "easy mode" if you will.

Further, the enemy raids are based on colony wealth, so most likely the 2 or 3 colonists that stumble onto the base will just get overwhelmed by another raid they're not equipped or trained to handle, and the game would end rather quickly and the cycle would repeat.

Not to mention a successful colony will have likely tapped out many/most/all of the resources on the map, meaning this theoretical idea only works if a colony has failed, because otherwise the colony has no room to expand and no resources with which to build the ship.

It's a neat idea but it's got some really severe flaws

I swallowed a penny once, but this is just ridiculous! 

I'm running DRM free on the latest version, (15C I think? the splash screen tells me it's the latest) and I'm using Windows 7

Actually if you press "keep playing" on your colony after the game ends, eventually you will get the random event for "a wanderer joins" and you will be able to continue from there.

And since colonist joining events are more likely to occur the lower your population, you really shouldn't have to wait more than a few in game days

Pulled this quote from a thread in the Bug section about the "delete zone" tool, Zhentar offers some useful insight about how Stockpiles function. I'll provide the quote in it's entirety even though only part of it is relevant to this discussion

Took a look at the code; it seems to happen at random because it literally does happen at random. What happens is that when you define a stockpile, the cells get shuffled into a random order (which is also why pawns fill stockpiles in random orders). The cell chosen for the very first slot in the list becomes a sort of "master" cell; if you bisect the stockpile with the delete zone designator, you should see that it always keeps the side of the stockpile with the first slot in it. And incidentally, that's exactly what happens here - the delete zone designator deletes one cell at a time, from bottom to top, left to to right, checking if the zone is still contiguous after every cell. So when you delete the full height of the zone, it gets bisected and the side that doesn't have the "master" cell gets deleted... and that side could well be the side you wanted to keep.

I have also experienced this issue intermittently. In my experience it seemed to have something to do with whether or not a zone is "selected" when using the Delete Zone tool, but I have not been able to accurately recreate it in testing. It's quite frustrating.

Edit: I am specifically referring to Grow Zones, I have not had the issue as often with Stockpiles. Since Grow Zones are easier to fix, the bug has not affected me as severely so I haven't made a point to focus my attention on it

I wouldn't call this a bug per se, it has more to do with tamed animal mechanics. Tamed animals are allowed to wander independently in their "allowed area" and if you do not restrict their movements they will wander freely. Tamed animals feel safe in your care and do not need to stick together.

I do agree, though, that certain kinds of animals should be more likely to stick together, but it's probably better to post this in the suggestion forum.

I found this issue on Mantis and it is said to have been fixed, however I am still experiencing the issue. It's very minor and borderline trivial.

To recreate the bug, enable dev mode, then enable god mode, then disable dev mode. I set several spaceship chunks to be deconstructed, and all 3 were deconstructed instantly because god mode was still active despite dev mode being disabled