[Poll] What would you like for A12?

[Kirid]

Other: I want to see roles, like df. Leader, Head doctor, commander,etc. It's a bit meaningless, but it would help tell stories.

[akiceabear]

Long overdue is a better progression system that considers early, mid, and late game experiences. Allowing an gameplay that feels much more like labored, earned progression - starting from desperate survivors to a fully fledged high tech colony.

-snip-

We all enjoy the experience of playing this for hours and hours and this would really provide the game with the structure to start something small and see something grow in scale and complexity the longer we played. So lets see that happen in A12!

I wholeheartedly agree with this. My guess is that this is also probably the "easiest" big update to implement into vanilla, given the wealth of mods available, some of which are very vanilla compatible already (e.g. Superior Crafting). I think the most basic summary is that end game development isn't needed - early and mid game is! The current vanilla experience allows us to skip the early pain of a fresh colony in a couple days of industrious planning/building.

I also second Kirid's comments on leaders. I recently suggested in another thread (maybe on Reddit?) that it would be great if raid leaders add buffs or debuffs to allies/enemies. Moreover, if our own colony naturally selected its own leader among the colonists based on some algorithm. Once a leader is selected it buffs nearby colonists passions/mood/efficacy when in distance, and sours their mood if they die. These are just a few ideas of many possibilities - I think this is potentially a very rich area for development.

[BattleFate]

How about the ability to rename a colonist's job so I no longer have a 'chef' as my colony healer and a 'shipwright' as my farmer.

[nobrainer]

This poll is really difficult to answer because all the options are good. Personally I hope all those things eventually make it into the game.

But we can only choose 2 so I picked things that I believe could be the imediate focus of alpha 12:

• more endings - different objectives for the player to pursue;
• relationships - another way to affect colonist mood since they already have traits and joy related activities.

Colonist relationships could also provide another way to increase population, the old babies discussion, but on a much "smaller scale/slower pace". Couples would only think about having a baby if certain requirements were met:

• extra bed in their "room area";
• enough food stored for x weeks/days, assuming 3 meals per colonist per day;
• some traits could prevent couples from reproducion: "infertile", "child intolerance", etc.;
• chance of having a baby would be affected by the biological age of the couple;
• each baby a couple has would reduce the chance to have another one so that sooner or latter that couple permanently stops creating more babies;

the intention would be to make relationships able to create extra colonists but at a much slower pace and only if your colony is stable enough for it, so only mid and late game.

[TLHeart]

This poll is really difficult to answer because all the options are good. Personally I hope all those things eventually make it into the game.

But we can only choose 2 so I picked things that I believe could be the imediate focus of alpha 12:

• more endings - different objectives for the player to pursue;
• relationships - another way to affect colonist mood since they already have traits and joy related activities.

Colonist relationships could also provide another way to increase population, the old babies discussion, but on a much "smaller scale/slower pace". Couples would only think about having a baby if certain requirements were met:

• extra bed in their "room area";
• enough food stored for x weeks/days, assuming 3 meals per colonist per day;
• some traits could prevent couples from reproducion: "infertile", "child intolerance", etc.;
• chance of having a baby would be affected by the biological age of the couple;
• each baby a couple has would reduce the chance to have another one so that sooner or latter that couple permanently stops creating more babies;

the intention would be to make relationships able to create extra colonists but at a much slower pace and only if your colony is stable enough for it, so only mid and late game.

you want the colonist to be able to produce offspring. okay sounds good.... but how long does it take an offspring to grow up to actually be a productive member of the colony. A five year old is not productive, 8 years, 10 years, and just how long have you actually survived in rimworld.

[Simulacrum]

Guys, I think you're forgetting what's unambiguously the most important missing feature.

Hygiene and waste management! My Colonists neither poop nor shower! Not only must they smell worse than your dog after it rolled in that rotting cow cadaver, but they're all chronically constipated too! Cleary, this desperately needs to be remedied.

[Axelios]

^ +1!

Free the poop!

[Play2Jens]

For all the people suggesting "drinking water", "showering" and "going to the toilet"; I don't think it's such a good idea. These are all minor features which doesn't add anything to the gameplay. Colonists are currently already sleeping 8 hours a day, eating and having joy activities. In my opinion, these things are meant to be in games like the Sims, which is a real-life simulation.

This game on the other hand is a survival sim, which imo should focus on survival, progressing and telling a story. That's why relationships and advanced factions is such a good idea, it adds to the sense of tale going on.

[Simulacrum]

This game on the other hand is a survival sim, which imo should focus on survival, progressing and telling a story. That's why relationships and advanced factions is such a good idea, it adds to the sense of tale going on.

Cleanliness and proper waste disposal is extremely important to survival, and accomplishing it functions both as another challenge to overcome in terms of the gameplay, and as another source of stories through putting demands on the characters and the base design. It's also somewhat conspicuous in its absence, considering just how important it is. It feels a bit weird that my characters are more concerned with cloud watching or meditating than they are with what happens to the waste in their hermetically sealed bunker with no toilets or sewer system. In fact, I'm kind of concerned about it on their behalf!

Sure, there are strong objections to the features, such as that the opportunity cost to implementing them might be too high, or that the way time is managed in the game makes it impractical to have pawns dedicate time to it (though I would argue that's just another challenge when it comes to base design, and in any case I'd rather see them spend time showering than cloudwatching, but I digress), but that it doesn't "add anything to the gameplay" or doesn't have anything to do with "survival, progressing" or "telling a story" I don't agree with at all.

[nobrainer]

This poll is really difficult to answer because all the options are good. Personally I hope all those things eventually make it into the game.

But we can only choose 2 so I picked things that I believe could be the imediate focus of alpha 12:

• more endings - different objectives for the player to pursue;
• relationships - another way to affect colonist mood since they already have traits and joy related activities.

Colonist relationships could also provide another way to increase population, the old babies discussion, but on a much "smaller scale/slower pace". Couples would only think about having a baby if certain requirements were met:

• extra bed in their "room area";
• enough food stored for x weeks/days, assuming 3 meals per colonist per day;
• some traits could prevent couples from reproducion: "infertile", "child intolerance", etc.;
• chance of having a baby would be affected by the biological age of the couple;
• each baby a couple has would reduce the chance to have another one so that sooner or latter that couple permanently stops creating more babies;

the intention would be to make relationships able to create extra colonists but at a much slower pace and only if your colony is stable enough for it, so only mid and late game.

you want the colonist to be able to produce offspring. okay sounds good.... but how long does it take an offspring to grow up to actually be a productive member of the colony. A five year old is not productive, 8 years, 10 years, and just how long have you actually survived in rimworld.

The question of how long have players been able to survive in the game is a false question since the game is still in early alphas and nobody can garantee that the final game won't take longer to complete.
That's why I choose more endings together with relationships because different endings may require different strategies from the player, and may take longer to complete.
Besides, in a situation of survival, I really doubt that children won't be put to work at a very young age, even if it's only in simple tasks like hauling and cleaning.

But hey! I don't mind having this thing optional. Place a checkbox in an options menu to enable/disable offspring and play the way you want. That's fine for me.

[keylocke]

yea, i agree with the water and hygiene features, since water management is different for each biome (ie : lack of water and rain in deserts, water turning into ice in cold biomes, etc).

meanwhile, hygiene should be a feature that lowers the chances of disease and infection. it is important if tynan wants to simulate the effects of a plague more believably. (quarantine)

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also, i'd like to add that i think tynan should also try to consider the "scaling" of the game with regards to it's population.

i think the game was initially designed for around 16 colonists. so the battle system starts to "break down" when needing to command larger amount of colonists. which tends to be how most people like to play the game anyways. (like others, i also like large colonies)

large battles are glorious. 

however, rimworld seems to lack some of the basic battle features of most other RTS games like starcraft/warcraft/total war which could optimize the organization of troops. which is why it is such a pain to command large armies.

like for example, here's a list of stuff that is easy to do on low-pop colonies, but tedious to do on high-pop colonies :

-trying to force attack X number of colonists on a single target : the player needs to initiate the order repeatedly for each colonist. (iirc)
-trying to force melee attack X number of colonists on a single target : same as above
-trying to sort colonists into groups/squads. (starcraft/warcraft allows ctrl+ groups) : it's annoying trying to sort my minigunners from my snipers and brawlers, trying to hunt and draft each bugger down across the map.

then there's also commands such as :
-attack target / area : which orders the troops to go to X location and attack any hostiles they come across.
-defend target / area : which tells troops to act as guardsmen or escort a target
-being able to queue commands..
-battle formations : like in total war series (being able to easily arrange selected troops into a tight/loose row or column)
-etc..

these are just some of the basic features that most RTS games already have that seems to be lacking in rimworld. (something that i'd like to see in the near future)

since large badass battles are friggin awesome.

[Pink Photon]

I didn't select animal husbandry, because it wasn't really interesting. It just seemed like a slight variation on hunting. But then I realized that I was only thinking about raising animals for meat. If we're talking about milk/eggs/wool, then it's a lot higher in my priority list.

[Rafe009]

Water. I'de like to see hydration added to the game as it would make desert survival a sort of inverse challenge of icesheet survival. Stillsuits, urine recycling, rain condensation collection, drilling to aquifer, channeling existing water sources, water purification.

It would also make heat more deadly as high heat levels would result in dehydration.

[Mechanoid Hivemind]

Water. I'de like to see hydration added to the game as it would make desert survival a sort of inverse challenge of icesheet survival. Stillsuits, urine recycling, rain condensation collection, drilling to aquifer, channeling existing water sources, water purification.

It would also make heat more deadly as high heat levels would result in dehydration.

+1

[Jstank]

I don't know. Some of these things are pretty ambitious and I would go to say at this point we are pretty close to a beta....due to certain steam'ing integrations....

With that being said, lets go with water as a resources and animal husbandry. They would go well together and add one final layer of depth before we hit beta.