Water system (Toilets and showers etc)

[Vagabond]

I'm not against the idea but I fear its execution. Adding item degradation already hit hard micro-management.
So I really don't want to care about plumbing, water, colonist getting thirsty when I've enough trouble keeping the energy flowing with siege happening during an eclipse just after a short-circuit drained my battery.
(even if we get less kamikaze attack wave)

The maximum feature I would suggest would be :
- "Shower pod" (energy only, only used to reduce the risk of disease/infection and moral boost)
- "sprinkler" (energy only, would also be used for crop field)
No water sources needed, just higher energy requirement depending on the biome "water value"
Doing so you also suggest that meal contain water through the same "mean".

Of course for fun the shower pod would ask for its own room or face the "sharing room" syndrome
Potentially a luxury would be to turn geyser into pretty hot bath (replacing shower).

Kegereneku,

Systems can be implemented in a manner in which they don't require macro. Item degradation is an important mechanic, it's execution could have been better, I think.

In my opinion, the game should be looked at as the player ensuring things are available, and the colonist take care of the rest. So item degredatiion should be "I provide orders to build clothes, they ensure they make and wear them, according to their needs (which I can set to maximize efficiency)" and "I provide the orders to repair items, the colonists ensure that they repair them".

The same as "I provide the orders to build and stockpile a room, the colonist ensure they build it and stock it to prevent degradation".

The past provides inspiration, and my mind is currently on "Diggles: Myth of Fenris". Having "leisure time", by setting each colonist's work schedule will allow them to take care of their needs when they aren't supposed to be working. It will also give time for them to socialize and such. So if you designate Colonist A to work from 8am to 8pm they will get up at 7am and auto que tasks to get a canteen of water, and a MRE, which they can now carry as items in this system. After that, they eat their breakfast and then by 8am they start que'ing tasks as per their priorities. Through out the day they may stop for a quick moment to take a sip of their canteen. For the purpose of demonstration, at noon they stop where they are at and eat their MRE/snack thing as a light lunch and then continue on with the rest of their work day. When they are off the clock at 8pm they go eat dinner then go socialize with colonist whom they favor. They may play an arcade game if they are into that, or go sit by a bookshelf and read a book (possibly gaining some skill experience depending on what they like to read). They'd fit in showers and their daily bathroom break during this time as well.

I like your idea for a gyser powerd communal hot pool type deal. It would give another use for geysers and have you decide on whether to build another geothermal powerplant on it, or the pool. It would fit in well with my "leisure time" idea.

In this, I think that essential plumbing and irrigation could prove quite interesting.

Cheers,
Michael

[Kegereneku]

There is such things as "needless management" and "acceptable break from reality".
In the case of item degradation I was obviously talking about the execution, not criticizing the idea.

Next, if we are to let the colonist choose what they do, giving them work schedule is going in the wrong direction and setting up time-consuming micro-management. Adding to that we can't hardly know how long a task will take it's a recipe for unexpected consequences.

It is one of the main point of the game that colonist choose by themselves what task they have to do and if they need to eat/sleep/clean

...by the way on the subject. I don't think we should create another "hygiene" status bar but fuse it with moral. The increased risk of disease could be tracked by a forgiving hidden bar. (susceptible to increase with the colonist walking in swamp and near corpse)

[Monkfish]

Slight thread-necro as I want to support the inclusion of a water system. Mackee's suggestion wins it.

Also, in relation to the last few comments, the addition of item degradation hit micromanagement hard simply because there were no supporting changes made that would assist with auto-management of it. Not being able to sort stockpiled items by quality/wear, for example, massively impinges on one's ability to manage these things effectively without having to do it all oneself (which is a difficult and tiresome task). During early access/alpha development, one should expect new features to not work very well, at all, or only hotch-potch a fix over an issue that causes more unforeseen problems later down the line.

It'll all come out in the wash eventually, it just may take several cycles, lots of bleach and a prison labourer or several.

[Mathenaut]

I'm with Kege on this one. It's not a bad idea if it's implementation is simple enough, but making it needlessly complicated for it's own sake is counterproductive.

[hwoo]

There is such things as "needless management" and "acceptable break from reality".
In the case of item degradation I was obviously talking about the execution, not criticizing the idea.

Next, if we are to let the colonist choose what they do, giving them work schedule is going in the wrong direction and setting up time-consuming micro-management. Adding to that we can't hardly know how long a task will take it's a recipe for unexpected consequences.

It is one of the main point of the game that colonist choose by themselves what task they have to do and if they need to eat/sleep/clean

...by the way on the subject. I don't think we should create another "hygiene" status bar but fuse it with moral. The increased risk of disease could be tracked by a forgiving hidden bar. (susceptible to increase with the colonist walking in swamp and near corpse)

Just like the weapons one you've explained it perfectly. What setting get up and sleep times would do also which you maybe thought of but didn't say was shifts.

It would allow your colony to have a early, late and night shift. So your colony is always running and you have people not milling about doing nothing or having to many people to do anything with.

It also allows you to put colonists into 'teams' of people that they like (I can picture colonists having 'prefered colonists' which give them a bigger buff to happiness when they are within proximity to them) which means you can have perfect teams working together. Or at least be able to spread the abrasives around instead of them compounding bad morale ontop of other abrasive bad morale in a single day.

Abrasives have single handedly ended my colonies and it could be avoided perfectly with this.

[Kegereneku]

Apparently Tynan "Work Table" seem to be work around micromanagement by only allowing to shift manually the previous automated preference of colonist to sleep at certain hours. Allowing actual 'shift' in term of management.

But now I expect someone to ask for the ability to program production machine the same way (or have the colonist power it on and off), though I don't care myself for such detail, at some point the gain are meaningless.

[DNK]

I'm fully on-board with having a water system. I think it's a major missing component of the game. For hygiene, for plant growing, for thirst, even for production.