random stuff, mostly tweakery things

[sulusdacor]

just some random thoughts on my part. love the game and keep up the good work. so hope i dont get to much into rambling. some things might already be suggested by other people, just my take on things. some things might already been fixed/tweaked in the upcoming alpha.

animals:

i currently feel there is no real need/benefit from keeping animals. in the early fighting were they have some strength it takes away alot of working power from your colony. pawns running over the map to try to tame one thing. having some starting animals helps early one, but i feel its more of a support thing. in later fights (mechs, bigger raids) you end up with gunfights most of the time. so an animals get shot down before it reaches the enemy (or badly wounded). you need to have a specific set up (walls,door system etc.) to use them to some effect in the later gameplay. so in the early game i currently feel the time of your pawns is better spend working other jobs and later on, for fighting the enemys are to weak in comparison to the enemys you face. which doesn't mean your enemies are to strong, i just find the animals are to weak.

the use in fighting usally makes all other non hauler animals useless. since for the most part of the game they do nothing for your colony, just eat your food. which is low at the start in most cases.

so for non fighting uses i usally try to have some muffalo's. i like how they look and their wool is great. but its more of a "nice to have" thing, other then a efffective animal. in general i feel the wool grow of the animals is way to slow. by the time i have enough animals to make some cloths with their wool. enough raids have droped dead to give me better/same level gear. or its so late in the game,that i dont need the cloth anymore. so i feel the effort/result of animals giving textiles to produce stuff does not really stand in any relation. the benefit comes usally to late in the game to make a difference.

so with animals producing stuff, i haven't tried around much. so not sure if thats already tweaked, compared to the older alphas.

another thing is i once tried to breed/have some megatheriums for fighting. bought some from a trader. they have a high taming difficulty. my tamer with 15+bionics ended up getting the 4 animals to obedience and 1 of them one piont in release. all that in 1 year. so i feel there need to be some tweaking to be done or other system for longer term tasks. to make rarer animals even possible to train/use.

possible solution(s) for animals:

for fighting a draft option would be nice (has been already suggestes from what i have seen). this would remove the animals not responding or responding to late in fights or when your colonist is drafted. the issus would be you could have your animals draftet basiclly forever, since they have no real mental break bar, just need to eat/sleep. and no please dont add a mental bar for animals, so they can break every time like colonists XD. an option would be they can only be drafted if their master is drafted. if he breaks/gets undrafted they would just wander away, do their thing.

for combat effectiveness i would like to have maybe a slight buff to animals you have trained for fighting (release). i would make sense that a wild dog would not be as strong as a dog my colonists trained. so just a buff to dps for 1 point and some health buff, would make them more durable in combat. it would on the other hand give the player an incentive to train the animals other stuff then obedience and hauling. this would make trained animals a bit more dangerous when they get mad. but there for the buff should not be to large.

for hauling i would either make all animals able to haul. since at the moment this is the only real use they have most of the time in the colony. or give the non haulers a real benefit to keep them over a hauling animals.

what i would love to see is some more benefits in specific roles. what i mean by that is, some animals would be really outstanding in combat (good dps, health), others would be good for animals products and others would be good nuzzlers (big joy/thought buff). there could be breeding animals too, which would duplicate like crazy. so having an animal would make them good in one of there 4 arfeas or severals. but in generals if an animals can't haul and fight. it would be good for producing or give a larger nuzzle buff. so there would be some benefit from keeping these, other then dead in your fridge^^. so this concept would mean, there are no "deadend" animals. which means every one would be good for something in another way. not sure if that is what you want. so i can totaly understand that the idea to have some animals giving no real positive upsides compared to others could be a thing in a game were failure is part of the process. just my thougth on the "roles" as they are.

for the taming i would love to see some kind of long term buff. what i mean by that is, that if an wild animals is being tamed for a longer period of time (could be 1 season or longer). after this initial period each taming attempt if failed will lower/increae the taming difficulty long term. for animals that would probably mean lowering the wilderniss. for example for 1 season i try to tame an elephant. i fail. after this one season each tame if fail again. there is an additional roll. if i suceed, the wilderness gets lowered by 1% permanent (just example numbers). when i then come back and try again, the animals would be easier to tame. if i fail again, i can roll again and make it easier (if i have a good tamer). so i would have a reasonable chance to tamer higher tier animals if i keep trying long enough. to dont make this frustrating (raising an "normal" animal to 99% wilderness), there should be a range this could be done (+/- 10% or 20% for example). so if you have reached to lowest possible chance with the rolls it can only stay or go up. the other thing is that this rolls should not be too difficult. was thinking abouth the values of what the hospitality mod uses when improving fraction relations. where if you have a reasonably social skill it is usally more in your favor. since you tamed already for an initial period your tamer will probably have that and the odds will be in your favor overall. so its not super frustrating for the player if the chances get lower and lower (can still happen).

prisoner/recruitment:

the prison breaks seem super strange. since it kills them for the most part. so would love to see some tweaking there. the other thing is that i feel like i dont have any control over if/when they happen as a player. haven't looked at the code, so not sure if i'm wrong here.

if your warden dies your chances to recruit are gone. since they lost their dear friend.

the recruitment seems more random then on other alphas before. what i mean by that a higher social skill seems to have lees impact. i felt like before having a 10+ social person would guarentee me most lkower chance prisoners in a reasonable amount of time. now its more of a coin toss.

having good mood on your prisoners seems not so much required. there is no real benefit for building a nice prison. mostly for the thing i mentioned above. recruitment feels more random.

possible solution(s) for prisoners/recruitment:

personally would like to have the prison breaks be a bit mood dependent. this would give the player a ebnefit from having a good prison. might still couse problems for a colony needing people and don't having a good prison yet. so should be some balance there, to not just have constant prison breaks in early game colonys.

which warden you use should make no difference. i assume the prisoners would be in my colony as such. that means there would be no random social chats to them if "bob" just died or "why they suddenly have a new warden". there would be hard interrogation and recruitment tactics at play to get them as part of my colony. so how would they know he just got shot by friendly fire? they should not get the social buff for the relation ship, since a new warden would have to build that. but not the insane debuff they have currently. mabe a "where is ..." thought with text "my warden just disappered i dont know were he is gone. i fear he might be dead.". but this should not be as bad as it currently is.

would like to see social skill and prisoner mood matter a bit more in terms of chance. i usally feel it makes not suche a big difference like in past alphas. and the social skills feels more like a tradeprice negotiation skill. just my impression. but there should be some benefit from having a 15 or 5 social person doing the wardening. and currently i dont feel this. maybe just my personal impression so.

for long term prisoners which are harder to recruit i would like to see some fail roll system. much like i suggested in the animal section. meaning if i have a prisoner for 1 season, he eats my food, takes time from my warden. there should be rolls after failing a recruitment to lower his prisoner recruitment difficulty. this should be in a certain range. so a 60ish difficulty person doesn't get a 99. and the chances should be in your favor, since i assume your wardens would be smooth talkers.

playerimpact/allowed microing:

this kinda concerns several smaller things. but hold a bigger question for me. which is: how much are you as a player allowed to interfere/micromanage your colonists?. what i mean by that currently i can tell my colonists what to wear. i can let them take drugs. i can forbid them to do stuff. i can give them a zone to be in. i can asign beds. so i n short i can do alot as players. if i "fail" to manage my colonists correctly, they respond by "breaking". means me losing control. you all know that. but this mechanic implies one thing. that i as a player can do all/control all parts of my colonits life to prevent losing control over them. thats how i understand it at least. maybe i'm wrong here in this assumption. then the other stuff might be not valid

in the current alpha i can not control all. i know the the storyteller events are out of control, that not what i mean. i mean gamemechanics in place for your colonists, which break this system of "mange and you are rewarded by having control". i unsure if this is intended or just a thing of the current alpha state. maybe these get fixed or are alreadyy with the new alpha. but it seems for me more like a design thing of the mechanic.

the things i'm refering to are:

pyromanics:
you don't have any control over these pawns. they can "break" anytime. they can be happy, they can be sad. it doesn't matter. the break doesn't show you as a player,that you have "missmanaged" your colony. its just the pawn doing stuff for no reason. one reason why i dont take pyros in colonys anymore and see other people dong the same.

possible solution(s) for pyros:
this was suggested in a stream not my idea: have some kind of fire needs bar. the colonist will search for fires (torches, cremation, smelter, campfire) to look at and fill the bar. if not he breaks. you can provide these sources and fill the need.

another option with out the bar would be to let these pawns just take joy from fire. that means there are new joy activites for these pyros. they can only do these and they will only do these for joy. other non pyro pawns will not do these. they just stand infront of the fire source and gain joy. could be faster then normal people would gain joy by their joy sources. so you would have some benefit from having these pawns. but this would give the player the power to control this pawn.

social fights:
yes they pawn x hates pawn y, but would he care if he just did some drugs, had sex and drank a beer? or if the enemys are literally shooting at him,trying to kill his butt? i mean currently they can happen everywhere at anytime. i dont see happy pawns getting into these less often. maybe wrong here.

the other problem is that in the past with the "had a nice talk" buff, there was a reason to keep a common room for pawns to meet up to eat and have joy activitys. at the current state i feel having them meet up leads to more "being insulted by xy". so there is not e real benefit of keeping your people "together".

possible solution(s) for social fight:
as i wrote at the start just make them mood depended and not possible when drafted. a happy pawn will not care if he just got insulted. so this would mean you could actually give people bionics arms/scyther blaeds without the fear of just killing each other at random times for no reason.

another thing i would like to see is a incentive to let people eat/spent time in a room. maybe give them a positive thought when they eat at the same table. or if they do the same activity in a room. both doing joy in your rec room. they would gain a positive mood buff and/or relation ship boni. since they do the same thing and bond over this. don't know just a thought. problem with the last one would be you could "force" pawns in relationships. so not sure. but some sort of benefit from having a room to meet up would be good. could be something totaly different.

chemical interesst/drugs:
i know they are new and probably some tweaking to be done  already. but if you have a person with the drug trades. and a random raider/visitor died somewhere on the map and left some drugs and you didn't notice you person seems to break randomly. i haven't found that this is mood dependent. maybe wrong here. but i feel like the pyros they just randomly break. know where the drugs are. know that thee are even drugs on the map. i know as a player i could search the map and burn them. but for that i have to know they exist. if some enemys die's on retreat or a visitors dies somewhere you dont get a message like "drugs are droped by a corps". you will know when the person breaks. and there is no tool to show current "loot" on map.

i like that the trait has a use now. but like the pyros it is more a "do not take this person" trait. then a good feature with drawbacks and benefits.

possible solution(s) for chemical trait:
can think of two ways. either make a message pop up,when drugs are doped by raiders/visitors/traders when they die. or change the trait to be mood dependent. the third thing would be to change the trait a bit. there could be some higher/lower resitance to addiction or some mood buff for people with that trait, if they took drugs. there could be the option that they take more drugs for one dose, then a normal person. or they could have more drugs active before overdosing.

other random stuff:

corpse eating/what to eat:
as soon as they go hungry they bite in the first thing they see. could be raw food, could be a corpse... this is not so much in the theme form above. since you can provide food as a player to prevent this behaviour. but i feel i covers this a bit. since i have a menu for cloth, for drugs. why do we not have a meals/foods menu. we could check what they can eat and what not. (if done, please forbid corpses as a preset). they would just not touch these things, which are disabled. the order of finer meals first, them simple,then raw stuff would still be there. maybe add an option to change this. would be nice for managing. but i feel this eat whatever takes the player control away in a way. especially when your colonists get hungry getting your cook to make some meals ends up being a micromanaging nightmare. since the colony work comes to a standstill. since everyone rushes to the food and you can just draft them. so with a menu,they would still be grumpy. if there mood would be very bad,they would still break and go on a food binge. then there setting would be whatever and you would have to deal with a colonist eating all you got. so it would still be fair in that way. but you would not have to draft all/lock doors etc to get stuff done if on low food.

animal hunting: probably already aware of that. but if a colonist gets hunted by an animals you usally just know it,when he/she gets hit. meaning its to late. would like to see a message pop up and game slow down/stop if this happens. so you can save your colonists. another thing with animals hunting i noticed. (was playing with ck animal mod in jungle). if there is no smaller size animal around they just wait. in my cases there were larger animals on the map (elephants). the animals added by the mod had a way higher dps then the elphants and would have had no problem hunting them. but they kept waiting for my colonists to wander out of a door to hunt them or till a smaller animal would come on the map or raiders/visitors.

presets: already posted this in the cheap suggestions. but the presets for meals should disable the meat for insects. medical use should be doctors only, that you dont have to disallow your medicine.  the drugs should be all disabled at the start. these can still be open if a player has the tutorial/learning helper thing turned on. to get the feedback and the effect if things go wrong get wasted. but for expierienced players this are tideous taskes. that you disable every time, every run and could be fixed super easy.

fleeing:assume this is already fixed in the new alpha. but enemys fleeing wrecks your base more then during there assult in larger raids.^^

doctoring/appareal: the getting up to change cloth thing is really anoying when treating people. but you probaly know that already.

so yeah, thanks for reading. as i said at the start great game love it. just some thought of mine about the current alpha.