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Were the circuits isolated by the switch during the short? In other words, when the short took place did all the circuits lose stored power, or just the isolated batteries? In the case of the latter, I don't see a problem.

I'm not sure the game has found its final theme yet regarding whether it's a survival game, or an escape game. Given the ever increasing threat, it would seem it's an escape game with the eventual goal of holding out as long as you can before getting a ship ready. I'd personally like to see some mechanics added that make the survival game (with no intention of escaping) more viable. If I've spent enough time building up my colony, I don't always want to leave. In some cases, I think this realistic in the context of the game. Perhaps some colonists didn't have much to go back to anyway, so they'll make a stay of it where they are. Perhaps someday this could be controlled by which world you land on. Some could be more hostile than others and would be dictated by the type of game the player selected when making the world. If you land on a conflicted planet, eventually you'll be overwhelmed.

The escape model mode makes sense as-is. The threat will eventually become too great to hold out, even with added defense abilities. The challenge would be to keep the long-term mode interesting for the player without having the storytellers ramp up the challenge indefinitely.

Either way, I think the next step is to have access to better defenses. Bunkers, stronger turrets, and traps are the way to go. Plus the apparel system could use some automation or presets. Getting a half dozen colonists to don armor, helmets, shields, and weapons can be a daunting task, one that gets old in the mid to late game.

I think commodities trading could make sense for this game genre, but I have reservations below in why this could be problematic in the game's current configuration. Another indie title, "Banished" actually took a simplistic approach and essentially added up a credit/value tally for each item on each side of the impending trade. There was no universal currency, just the perception of a "fair" trade. The player had to have enough goods to have their credit/value tally greater than or equal to what the trader was offering you. There was no overflow of credits if they weren't equal; the computation was just used to gauge acceptable deals - one-time, goods for goods.

In the game's current form, however, I believe silver is the universal currency. As such, I maintain that it should always be visible on the trading window. All transactions are defined in terms of silver, including pricing for both buying and selling. You can still accomplish commodities trading with the current system, by lining up trades that end in no silver changing hands. It's really the same thing, only the current system allows unequal trading (or all selling and buying) with the difference made up in silver for future trades or traders.

If we go this route, we'd have to consider that unequal trading would cease to be a game concept. You couldn't sell all your sculptures to one trader and then wait for the next trader to buy a bunch of weapons. In order to buy those weapons, you'd have to trade the combat trader with goods they're willing to receive. At a minimum for trade to still be fun, I'd think most of the traders would need to accept most of the goods. That may be support just leaving the system as is.

I was about to report the same thing. The trade list is getting longer and longer. Silver, the universal currency, should always be visible on the screen. As mentioned, I'd suggest just freezing the top line of the list.

It may not be judged as "worth it," but an overlay helping the player visualize the support system would be kind of nice. With larger rooms, I'm always counting squares in lots of directions.

I suppose this could be as simple as a 5 tile "circle" template or stamp, colored like the planning tool, that attaches temporarily to the cursor. The player could quickly visualize the consequences of mining out a wall when a square in question has no other structure within the radius. Would save lots of counting.

I was under the impression that coolers required a direct conduit connection, similar to a door. Heaters can grab their power from nearby conduits similar to standing lights. Unless this was changed in one of the very last Alpha 8 release candidates, I'd say the behavior you describe is expected and not a bug.

if I'm missing the point, perhaps you can show a screenshot of the specific problem you're experiencing.

It's an interesting idea, and a reason to bring a knife to a gun fight. I assume the intent is to bring purpose to melee weapons.

a: "5 potatoes on 20 tiles" it happens often with grownable resources: colonists will bring them in small amounts and because there are many colonist, they will bring them to different tiles, because they are "reserved" and spread stuff over half stockpile even it this can fit on one tile.

It would be nice if there were some breakout tasks under hauling. One could be "stockpile consolidation" where the colonist will seek to minimize stacks. Being a breakout task would mean that the player can only have colonists do this when other higher priorities have been addressed.

b: "go to hell and bring me 5 potatoes" it happens all the time: a colonist goes to a stock, takes 1 (with words one) steel and hauls it to stockpile even if there enough space for ten stacks. more "funny" it becomes if you want to bring a stack of survival meals from siege camp... you send one hauler to bring a stack and he brings one meal because there was a place in one of stacks. you send him one more time and in the time he gets there someone eats one meal and your hauler will again bring one meal...

I believe you're describing Mantis Artifact ID 726.

2. add a minimum and maximum skill required to bill config gui so you can say: this bill can only be done by a colonist with skill level 5-15 and this one with 18+ and this one is for people with maximal skill level 5. there are moments when you need more than one crafter for small tasks like stonecuting and smelting and don't want an low level crafter to do task that need high level crafting skill to succeed like weapon crafting and you do not want your high level crafter play around with low level tasks, when there are swords to smith.

I agree. There needs to be a way for you to specify that you want only an expert to craft something out of the little gold that you have.

Note that every one of these issues can be worked around by manipulated stock piles and their priorities as well as playing with colonist assignments to force certain colonists to use certain tables etc. Some require a tedious amount of micromanagement to have outcomes that exactly match the player's intent. These small UI / useability issues have come up before, but I think there's an understanding that Tynan is more focused on new features right now. Still, with more game mechanics and systems inevitably adding to the UI/control burden of the player, these kinds of issues can become distracting to the overall experience, especially when they start to add up and/or compound. At the moment, I leave the PSMs forbidden on the map. I just can't deal with the inefficiency and time required for most of the colony to retrieve items that are far away.

In certain circumstances, it's no joke now to acquire essential personal survival meals from the other side of a map in winter. It's just plain annoying when you maneuver a retrieval like that and they start coming back with 1 out of 10. Players shouldn't have to:

• Draft the colonist so they drop the meal.
• Pause the game.
• Create a new empty stockpile of the highest priority that can accept PSMs.
• Undraft the colonist.
• Unpause the game.
• Select the colonist and right click on the PSMs to force the hauling job. This is usually necessary since they want to go to bed or eat at this point.
• Once they arrive, remove the stockpile from step 3.
• Wait for a colonist to haul the meal to its final destination.

Somewhere around steps 7 and 8 you have to be careful that a hungry colonist doesn't come along and eat them before they're hauled for storage (while related to the subject of unwanted micromanagement, this is a different subject entirely)

I think inefficiencies like this stick out (for me anyway) since some other areas of the game are optimized rather nicely. Building, as an example. I like how a builder will acquire materials necessary for multiple projects in proximity. This seems especially well done when compared to other games of similar mechanics. I'm aware we're in alpha, and timing optimizations can be tricky for numerous reasons. I just wouldn't let some optimization tasks go unresolved for too long. Just my two cents.

Fertilizer pumps are going away according to the changelog. I have concerns about not being able to remove man-made floors and revert back to the natural ground type.

That's a terrible way to die. Great video.

My concern with fertilizer pumps coming out is there's now no way to remove flooring, especially outdoor flooring. Re-organizing outdoor layouts and walk paths could now be a problem. If I decided to pour concrete around my beacon in the early game to get it up and running, that area is now forever useless for farming.

We need a way to remove man-made flooring to once again open up areas that used to have farm-able dirt. Ideally in any builder game like this, players should have the ability to undo and remove most objects they place. This promotes maximum flexibility, and is also realistic.

So the 19 December change log entry says:

Properly disallowed harvesting body parts or bionics from corpses.

I'm not understanding why, other than Tynan is seeing this as exploitative. Even then, there's so much time between traders, and the correct kind of traders, that bionic parts are difficult to come by. This holds true for very rich colonies as was said previously since all the silver in the world doesn't increase the trader visits.

I agree with the previous suggestions about deceased time and extraction skill etc. playing a role in possibly compromising the bionic body part. Ideally, I'd take this into account and allow live organ harvesting as well with an additional multiplier that makes it very difficult to accomplish unless you have an absolute expert doctor.

I can think of numerous stories than can be generated from organ (natural or bionic) harvesting. At least a part of your favorite colonist can live on or save someone's life if they should perish. etc.

I'm disappointed to see this ability go honestly.

Perhaps it's best to make the distinction between using cover and establishing maximum range, since one can be mistaken for the other.

I can't say that I've seen them take cover, but they do seem to periodically retreat back to their maximum range which will usually out-range your colonists and turrets. A kill box addresses this for now ensuring that the mechanoids have no shot on anything valuable without being in range of your defenses.

Agree that the text should be updated if players have positive confirmation of mechanoids using cover.

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Another way to address the exploit would be for visitors to register that they're barred from leaving the map, and take that as a hostile action. This probably makes more sense when the diplomacy functionality has matured further, however.

There are potentially innocent (or even beneficent) reasons why visitors might end up temporarily barred from leaving, such as if they happened to be inside your base when an enemy raid arrived, and you lock the door to prevent colonists from wandering out into the firefight. Thus, I don't think it should automatically be interpreted as hostile. Perhaps being barred from leaving the map and suffering negative health consequences due to heat/cold/starvation while trapped could be reasonably taken as a hostile action.

That's very true you're right. Perhaps a timeout of sorts mixed with a combination of negative health effects as you suggest would be best. Then again if the diplomacy ever sees a revamp (so visitors actually do something), this whole mechanic may change anyway.

-when choosing meals, choose meals based on quality vs distance. (the further it is from pawn, the lower it's attraction value for that pawn)

-as for meds, herbal meds should be top priority, then medicine, and finally glitterworld meds. (since most injuries are just scratch and bruises) while normal medicine and glitterworld meds are best used for sickness and adding implants. (choosing which meds to use also takes into account the distance from pawn and the patient to be healed, etc.)

I've been saying for a while now that these should be configurable during game play. A little priorities menu similar to the colonist configuration matrix with check boxes for what food and medicine can be used by prisoners and colonists. Setting priorities would be even nicer (such as the "manual priorities" option in the colonist matrix), but just having the ability to turn off pawn consumption of some types of meals and medicines would at least allow the player to manage the situation.

Turning consumption on/off to achieve priorities is still micromanagement, but not at the level necessary for forbidding / unforbidding items at exactly the right time to have the colonists do what you want. Hauling those juicy PSMs from the other side of the map becomes a breeze when you configure your colonists to not consume them. The player needs to remember to turn them on for consumption during a food shortage, but otherwise the colonists will just stockpile them for a crisis, which is what the player is usually trying to achieve. As was mentioned, unless you send a colonist that just ate to a perfectly timed newly-unforbidden stack of PSMs on the other side of the map, they're going to eat one out there.

For medicine, the forbid / unforbid game is a little easier to play. Even then, I have to ensure to unforbid the regular commercial medicine when building a medical bed, or when injuries are severe. I then have to remember to forbid them again before anyone gets an idea to use one for a scratch. That brings up another whole point about using certain medicine for certain types of injuries, but let's not even go there yet. The regular commercial medicine is extremely important in the early game, especially if you're saving for medical beds. I can't stand watching them be used for silly purposes just because I didn't forbid them in time.