Improved planning tools

[Niknud]

While I wait for the game to release on steam I have been watching a lot of streams of this game.  One of the things that bugs me is the planning tools.  When I watch people planning out their fortresses everything looks the same because the only tool they have is the little white square that marks out the area.  How hard would it be to give people color options.  You could designate red as what you want mined and or use blue so you know these will be walls.  Maybe different symbols for things like furniture or power.  Also maybe allow players the ability to toggle between seeing the design grid and not seeing it.  That way when you are ready to expand you just have to hit tab to see where you wanted to dig next.

[PsychoticLime]

Well, the planning tools have been added quite recently: before when you needed to add a new room you just paused the game and worked around with walls and furniture and stuff until you were satisfied, then you just hit play again.
Planning is useful because you can lay out things looking to a future expansion. I never felt the need for more than just the little white square to be added, but reading your sentence about different symbols for furniture and so on made me think: what if you could place the items with left click of the mouse and PLAN THEM with the right click?

Let's have an example: you select the item you want (for example the research table) from the Architect menu, but let's say you haven't dug out your beautiful research lab in the side of the mountain yet. The research table is a 2x4, sure, it's easy to remember, but will my colonists have space to work on it? Where should I put the light? Let's say I want to shrink in a comms console, too: where do I put it? Currently, the only way to tell is digging out the space FIRST, estimating the amount of space needed (and I get it wrong like 4 times out of 10). But using this planning system, you could plan your room BEFORE digging it out, having the minimal waste of time and resources.

What do you think? Is it like the idea you had in mind?

[Niknud]

Since I have not played the game yet I can only comment on what I have watched in the countless streams I have watched.  So being able to right click plan with the already available icons would be great.  You could also add a Complete plan action that lets you paint over what you have planned and activates it to puts your colonists to work on current plans.  Somewhere down the line you could get even more advanced with lets say planning a metal wall where there is currently solid rock.  The colonists will know that they need to dig out the current stone and start building the wall as they dig.  I have seen more then a few colonists get crushed by falling ceiling and its kind of funny.