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I think the game's "high-beauty" carpets are a bit dull and feel that the beauty-neutral wooden floor is much more visually appealing. I was therefore thinking of modding the game's carpet graphic textures, by giving them a pattern or something, to make them look nicer.

I have followed the instructions set out in this thread, including installing the DDS plugin, but opening the .dds files in GIMP just produces images like this:



Any ideas as to what's happening here and what's going wrong?

Borealis is Latin for northern and australis is Latin for southern, so Borealis and Australis could potentially be the names for the seasons corresponding to northern hemisphere summer and southern hemisphere summer.

Yesterday I was able to right-click on an item in one stockpile to prioritize hauling it to another, but usually this option isn't available. Similarly to you, I don't know what the circumstances need to be for this to be possible.

Kind of like how when one is forbidding an item it's usable and when they turn forbidden off it's ... prohibited?

"This item is not disallowed" would be a closer comparison.

So you're asking for basically three buttons?

Fire At Will
Manual Targeting
Cease Fire

Since "Fire at will" and "Cease fire" are the opposite of each other, they would be covered by one on/off toggle. "Allow firing" would be a clear and accurate title for such a button. It would work in the same way as the "Allow firing" button did in the old build for automatically targeting shooters - when the player turned off the "Allow firing" toggle for an auto-shooter, they would stop firing until the "Allow firing" toggle was turned on again.

The problem was that there were two systems - if one did the same for a manual-shooter, they would continue to fire even with "Allow firing" toggled off.

I don't know how other people play this game, but when I'm in firefights I often have colonists manually-targeting particular enemies. For example, if a raider has a weapon like a doomsday rocket launcher or if an enemy is charging a colonist, I'll often prioritize shooting at them by using the manually-targeting option. Over the course of a battle, my colonists may switch between these firing states multiple times and, in the chaos of battle and with many colonists to coordinate, I often don't remember exactly which shooters are set to manually-targeting and which are set to auto-targeting.

So, previously, if I wanted to stop colonists firing because they were at risk of shooting a friendly, I would disable the "Allow firing" toggle only to find that the colonists continued to shoot because they were in a manually-targeting firing state. My "suggestion" was that the manual-shooters operated using the same rules as auto-shooters, so if one disabled the "Allow firing" toggle for a manually-targeting shooter, they would stop firing in the same way that an auto-shooter would.

A second toggle relating to automatic/manual shooting would also be useful, as much as an indicator as a toggle. A player would be able to clearly see whether a colonist is in automatically-targeting mode or manual-targeting mode. One can currently look at a colonist's state to get an idea - if the colonist is in auto-targeting it should say "Watching for targets" and if in manual-targeting, it will say "Firing at ...". I don't think this makes things clear enough, though, especially for new players - if it says "Firing at...", it is not explicitly clear that the colonist is firing at that target while under auto-control or manual-control, just that the colonist is firing at that target. A toggle indicator with a green tick or red cross would make it clear and unambiguous. As well as its function as an indicator, this toggle would also be a way for the player to change from manual to auto-targeting by clicking it.

Jafema (Janfebma)
Apmaju
Jugsep (Julaugsep / Jugusept / Jugusep)
Ocnodec (Octnovdec / Ocnod)

You want a "Cease fire!" button.

Basically, but the trouble with the words "Cease fire" are that one is creating a double negative with an on/off toggle. With it toggled off, one is stopping ceasing firing.

What would you like to see then @The Man With No Name?

As described in the other thread:

i) A toggle that controls whether a shooter - any shooter, whether automatically-firing or manually-firing - is allowed to fire their weapon. There are certain times in battles when one wants to stop colonists from firing momentarily, usually because another colonist is in a position where they are in danger of getting shot by friendly fire. So any time the player wanted to stop a particular colonist from firing, they could turn this toggle off. "Allow firing" would be an accurate title for such a toggle, but I am more interested in the underlying mechanism than the precise wording.

Secondly, and this arose from discussion in the other thread, and it seems like a logical conclusion to make the combat interface complete,

ii) A way to switch easily from having a colonist in manually-targeting mode to having him/her in automatic-targeting mode. One can do it easily the other way round, from automatic-firing to manual-firing, by just right-clicking to select the target one wants to shoot at. To go from manual to automatic currently, one has to undraft and redraft the colonist. I think that, generally, a player is more likely to be going from auto to manual targeting, but it would be nice to have the option to go vice versa, partly for completeness' sake, and to have it integrated into the combat user interface.

As I say, it's the first of these two issues that is in greater need of addressing. The second is more a case of it currently being a bit inelegant, in that one is required to undraft and redraft the colonist - it's not a straightforward intuitive route to one's desired outcome.

My suggestion wasn't for a change of wording on the "Allow firing" toggle, and I have no real opinion on that. Aside from different words used, have any changes been made to how things actually operate? It doesn't look like it from the screenshot - it looks like its just making it more explicitly clear that the "Fire at will" toggle only applies to automatically-targeting shooters. There is no mention of manually-targeting shooters and so, presumably, it's the same as before and that when a player orders a manual shooter to cease firing they will continue to fire regardless.

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EDIT: Actually, the wording of "Fire at will" kind of makes things yet more obtuse, because what is really needed is a toggle that controls whether a colonist should be firing or not, something that should be decided by the human player and which should apply to both manual and automatic shooters. "Allow firing" would be an accurate description of such a toggle, were the game to introduce one.

"Fire at will" has the connotation that the shooter has been delegated authority over his/her own firing - "fire at will" is at the shooters' will. It's thus a much closer description of an automatically-targeting shooter than a manually-targeting shooter, who by definition, is not "firing at will".

Does "Fire at will" mean that the shooter has been allowed to fire their weapon or that they have been given free will as to who to target (automatic-targeting)?

A place for further discussion on the subject of this thread:

https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=32037.0

Basically there are four states colonists should be able to be in while in a drafted state:

Firing allowed/Auto-targeting
Firing allowed/Manual-targeting
Holding fire/Auto-targeting
Holding fire/Manual-targeting

One could combine the two "Holding Fire" states into a single state, so a manual-targeter who was ordered to hold fire and then subsequently allowed to fire again, would go straight into auto-targeting mode. Or keep them as two states, so a manual-targeting shooter told to hold fire and then allowed to fire again would go back to firing at the target they were previously.

If going for three states, then there could be a sliding toggle (like with how one assigns Medical care level) for "holding fire", "auto-targeting", "manual targeting". If going for four states, then two on/off toggles would be the better option, one for "allow firing" (on/off) and the other controlling automatic/manual-targeting.

Personally, I prefer the four states solution, but either would be an improvement and solve the issues.

EDIT: To add, one still needs to keep in mind that switching from automatic to manual-targeting doesn't really work without having already selected a target, hence my suggestion of a "must select target" notification. I don't think this is such a big deal as the more intuitive way of going from auto-targeting to manual-targeting in gameplay is going to be for the player to just right-click on who they want to shoot at, rather than changing any toggle from auto to manual-targeting in the interface.

Exactly. It's neither intuitive or integrated into the existing combat mechanism/interface.

Why if I want to stop an auto-targeting shooter do I just need to uncheck "Allow Firing", but if I want to stop a manually-targeting shooter I have to turn off allow firing, undraft and redraft? They should both follow the same procedure.

If all you are thinking about is a cosmetic name change, then explain how a player would do these things:

i) Hold fire if they are in manual-targeting mode?

ii) Switch from manual-targeting to auto-targeting?

We should rename it "auto-fire".

If that's all that's going to happen, then it's not solving the issue at all, just moving the confusion sideways so to speak.

I've noticed this. One can have more different types of items than can fit on the screen. So a scrolling feature would be the obvious solution.