Manufacturing System

Started by Spike, October 06, 2013, 01:40:04 PM

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Spike

I'm splitting this off from the Suggestion & Discussion: Research System thread.

Quote from: Zeiph on October 06, 2013, 01:22:22 PM
What as been said is generally interesting, but as DIY science is reproducing what as already been discovered, I'm more wondering about DIY industry like producing solar panels out of raw material...

So the first question is how detailed the game will be about tool building.  How detailed of a "tech tree" do you have to have, in order to build more detailed machines?  Which is really a question for Tynan to decide.

The Crash Pods would probably have tool kits, allowing you to build lower tech machines.  Hmm, maybe you would require a Forge or Machine Shop in order to build the next tier of machines, and on.  In order to build the really advanced stuff (like a spaceship), you would need to bootstrap your production capabilities.  Otherwise, it'd be like crashing your car on a road trip, and building a whole new car with a toolkit and scrap metal.

GC13

The game's fiction even offers us a chance for starting at a more rudimentary tech level, where even building up to solar panels would be regarded by the player as a success.

One of the ideas is also having to deal with rival tribes on the planet. Well, if we're forced to start at their tech level and have to bootstrap our industry up to the point where we can make firearms, we'd be using more of that range of technology.

I'm not necessarily hoping for an industry chain as involved as Gnomoria's (or Dwarf Fortress's, I guess), but the fiction gives room for it to be a possibility to start from so far back. Really, however we get the more things to build I think it can be executed well.

AspenShadow

#2
The manufacturing system, I feel, is something of a must. Yes, it could be explained away by giving Rimworlds fictional future toolkits comprised of "atomic-reassemblers" (or other such god-tech) that can convert basic material into most things; similar to how instead of food groups at the moment in the alpha we have one flat "Food" resource that is ground up into non-toxic paste with a machine, but I think that might cheapen the experience a bit.

[Note: There is a debuff present for colonists eating paste, this indicates that future expansion into real food is planned and the system expanded at the very least.]

I concur with the ideas of a tier-enabling building (anvil, forge, workshop, factory, automated assembly line, nanoreplicator compound, etc.) that opens up a new tier of products. It sounds pretty fun and Tynan has already stated that he likes the idea of interaction with tribe-esque factions so it should be fair to start on a similar tech-level to them, or perhaps they're slightly better than you in some respects and you can barter for their culture-specific secrets?

Something I'd be interested in seeing if it wouldn't add to the workload too much is the idea of "by-products" or run-off, manufacturing a certain number of times causes the tier-enabling building to spawn a by-product: whether it be dirty water, ash, poisonous compounds, nuclear waste, brown-matter, whatever lol.

Glymner

You could put a Slave/Manual vs Automated industry twist on the whole thing as well, which leads to "manual" vs automated oppression. This would influence how you treat these Tribal factions. Mentor or Enslaver or something in the middle. "Colonization... Colonization never changes... Or Does it?"

AspenShadow

Provoking thoughts. Though of course when you reach a certain level of tech even automated industry is slavery that may eventually cause your AI to go all Skynet on your colony.

Then again from a logical standpoint you'd have to find a pretty big pro to staying with manual labour rather than the more precise, faster, quality-controlled, less whiny automated labour.
Not to mention after reaching a certain tech level you have to go automated, it would be rather amusing to watch a colonist try and put together a nanoscale computer chip after all lol.

British

Which brings the concern of the usefulness of having colonists after a certain high-level of technological advancement...
If everything really is automated, then it's not a game anymore as long as we control only the colonists.
I suppose there is a limit to be drawn.

AspenShadow

#6
Something I'd like to see developed in the Alpha is an expansion from a one-resource based crafting system, e.g. just metal. To perhaps metals, mineral/stone, and organic material (reeds for woven carpet)?

Mineral/Stone is acquired through the common mining, metal is collected from debris and by smelting ore (mineral>metal conversion with not 100% amount), and organic material from cutting down flora and perhaps later harvesting more than food from dead animals?

[Reconsidered & Withdrawn]
Going over it again from an outside perspective it would detract from the game, also as stated below it runs the risk of becoming Minecraft-ish lol.

Zeiph

Yes, actually my initial though was to raise the point that not everything has to be self-explanatory. I mean at the end of the day rimworld is a game, and from what I saw of it (exploding rats), it doesn't take things seriously, and things can be explained by "magechnology"...

On the other side I would be very glad of having a quite wide range of possibilities, with a sort of construction tech tree, but maybe not to the point of a minecraft (yes I said it) building system (wood -> planks -> sticks -> ladders). I am more like having a special item ( like the said smelter, forge, some kind of automated assembly line and maybe nano-assembler) to unlock some part of the whole construction system. i.e: the smelter allows production of specific alloys, thus enabling the construction of better walls and the forge, which when built allows for constructing the next tier of items, and so on...

Hypolite

#8
We have to go back to the initial tipping point that enabled Industry in the first place : profitability of mass producing. That came from cheap energy from coal and a reachable market big enough.

In RimWorld, currently there is neither : power is scarce and colony size don't ever get to 100 people. So there would never be the need to make up an costly and power-consuming assembly line only for 100 people. Remember it's a storytelling game, so everything that happens should serve the story at some point.

A few stranded colonists are starving => Food system
A few stranded colonists are attacked by raiders => Combat and defense
A few stranded colonists are unhappy when sleeping outside => Buildings
A few stranded colonists are unhappy when in darkness => Light and power system

What would start with "A few stranded colonists..." and end with " => Industry"?

Edit: Actually, I'll expand my answer to add my experience with the game Towns. It has some very basic item production chains, notably for food, and citizens are running back and forth to get supplies, make a semi-finished product and put it on the ground, and then someone else picks it up and another one to complete the product. If at first it's nice to see everything coming along well, after a while it gets boring that so many citizens are only producing food, it's not very interesting in a Single Player environment, there's no challenge, no story that goes with it.

Zelph's suggestion is more interesting, building a specific building once could unlock buildings possibility, and the loss of that building would prevent from building the previously-unlocked ones. There is novelty, and it can be part of a story, for example "The day the smelter blew while defending walls from raiders".

Spike

Yeah, I think I'd prefer to see a tier system that has steps to do more complicated things, but that is somewhat abstracted.  I would prefer, for example, a Forge required to make swords; but not the requirement to make a blade and hilt in order to make a sword.

Nero

Quote from: Spike on October 06, 2013, 07:18:15 PM
Yeah, I think I'd prefer to see a tier system that has steps to do more complicated things, but that is somewhat abstracted.  I would prefer, for example, a Forge required to make swords; but not the requirement to make a blade and hilt in order to make a sword.

I agree with this. If you take 'industry' out of the game then you just have something simple, and while I take into account this is a 'storytelling' game you still have to have gameplay. I mean RimWorld isn't Dear Esther, it's a different beast. It is the simulation of the story of a group of survivors/colonists on a planet, insomuch as it doesn't actually have a story. You're the story and if you don't have interesting elements to build upon then there is no story.

For example if a tiered industry system is implemented my colonist A goes out and gathers some metal to smelt down at a smelter. This produces a metal bar and that metal bar goes to the forge/smithy and it is made into ammo, tools, or weapons. That is as far as it has to go. I don't need a gunsmith that will makes the barrels, and a crafter that makes the stock, then an assembler who screws it all together. Now for the contra-example of no tiered system, colonist A takes the same metal resource and puts it in a machine that spits out a gun, tool, or other item. There is only a single link in this chain, therefore no tension can be made. The most tension or story building you'll get out of it is 'Oh, I am out of metal.'


Spike

Quote from: Nero on October 06, 2013, 07:43:53 PM
For example if a tiered industry system is implemented my colonist A goes out and gathers some metal to smelt down at a smelter. This produces a metal bar and that metal bar goes to the forge/smithy and it is made into ammo, tools, or weapons. That is as far as it has to go. I don't need a gunsmith that will makes the barrels, and a crafter that makes the stock, then an assembler who screws it all together. Now for the contra-example of no tiered system, colonist A takes the same metal resource and puts it in a machine that spits out a gun, tool, or other item. There is only a single link in this chain, therefore no tension can be made. The most tension or story building you'll get out of it is 'Oh, I am out of metal.'

I'd actually go in between that - you gather the metal, and need the smelter in order to do Tier 1 things, and the smelter and forge to do Tier 2 things.  There shouldn't be any need for the player to actually smelt the metal into the bar.

Pheanox

A simplified manufacturing system would be good, I think.  I wonder, though, how this would work without adding new resources to the game.  I have no problem with it, but from a design standpoint, who knows how much complexity it would add to change "metal" to "iron" and "silicon" and "gold" and other materials needed to make circuit boards and the like.  A foundry sort of  building for smelting the metal you find should be there, I think.  The problem with making a more complex manufacturing chain is that it probably gets exponentially more complex the more you add to it.

Like Nero and Spike said, a more abstracted system would probably be best.  A different workshop for different items makes sense.  For example: have a weapon manufactory, rather then having to collect saltpeter, sulfur, lead, iron, and copper to make gunpowder, bullets, and sidearms.

GC13

Well, if Ty wanted to differentiate RimWorld from Dwarf Fortress, he certainly could do so with an abstracted manufacturing system.

There's actually something to be said for just having to lay down an Artisan's Table that you use to place build orders for weapons and other things at (or, better, that automatically receives orders you make from another button). It frees up the building experience to where we're focusing not on building an industrial base (something that, in my experience, is rather unsatisfying),but instead on increasing our colonists' comfort and productivity.

Imagine. Rather than struggling to get a blacksmith up so we can make the tools we'll use to put together the heavy machinery we'll create the molds for our high-end stuff on, with a clear end goal in mind, we can forge a story around our more abstract decisions.

Do we irrigate our cropland with that energy or air condition the main hall? We can build a reclamation center that will get us more metal out of our mining, or we can build an entertainment complex. A truck would make hauling back metal much more efficient, but would cost us a lot of energy that we'd have to use to synthesize fuel for it.

Not a climb up a ladder, but decisions on how to use scarce resources. It's gameplay I find much more enjoyable, and it works much better if you're trying to use a simulation game to tell a story.

Jakadasnake

Quote from: GC13 on October 06, 2013, 02:03:18 PM
The game's fiction even offers us a chance for starting at a more rudimentary tech level, where even building up to solar panels would be regarded by the player as a success.

One of the ideas is also having to deal with rival tribes on the planet. Well, if we're forced to start at their tech level and have to bootstrap our industry up to the point where we can make firearms, we'd be using more of that range of technology.

I'm not necessarily hoping for an industry chain as involved as Gnomoria's (or Dwarf Fortress's, I guess), but the fiction gives room for it to be a possibility to start from so far back. Really, however we get the more things to build I think it can be executed well.

Personally, I would love this. This is one of the little touches that I think we're sort of missing for now. The base-building is amazing, but would be so much more gratifying if it didn't feel like there was a skipped step in there. Like, day 1 within a couple hours my colonists go from mats on the ground to an air-conditioned home. I really want to feel that hunt/gather stage. I want it to challenge my colonists and tie them together through adversity. I want to earn the good life.