Alpha 9 - Initial impressions

[Rock5]

I thought I'd start a topic where people can comment about changes they have noticed in Alpha 9 and what they think of them. This can include documented changes and undocumented changes.

I'll start things off:

   
• As has been mentioned elsewhere, Wind Turbines can now sometime produce little to no power. I think this is realistic because wind doesn't always blow.

   
• The Beauty Display toggle (bottom right corner) is a welcome feature that shows the beauty at a given location. I'm happy to see the beauty range has increased tremendously. It always annoyed me that someone at one end of an average room couldn't see the beauty of object at the other end of the room.  I was surprised to notice walls are no longer count towards beauty. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It sure makes things easier because I no longer have to replace rock walls with pretty wood ones anymore.

   
• I forgot to open the roof over the trade stockpile on my first trade and discovered it's no longer necessary to have trade stockpiles open to the sky. In fact it doesn't forbid you from placing a beacon in the middle of a mountain. This will surly make it easier to sell frozen goods. In fact it will make it easy to sell any items from wherever they are kept.

   
• I found one of the benefits of 1x2 bedrooms in A8 was their temperature was always equalized to the corridors of my base. Now they are not. I thought the walls were supposed to conduct heat now. Such small rooms should be more likely to equalize,not less.

   
• Floors now all have the same beauty, 2, except for Cement which is -1 and Smoothed Floor which is 4. I guess this is a good thing. If you can't use Smooth Floors then you can use any of the other flooring options, they are all the same. So you are free to mix it up instead of limiting yourself to the flooring option with the highest beauty.

   
• I don't know yet if I like or loath the need to send a colonist to power devices on and off. I haven't been playing long enough. At least now we have a power switch.

Feel free to add your own thoughts about these and other changes.

[Feniks]

My biggest observation is that it runs smoother having less fps impact on my computer than alpha 8 not sure if it was optimized better or I am just imagining things.

[ManWithNoName]

I like how you ignore my points Rock.

As for realistic its not at all, you are talking about the wind on earth this is ment to be a planet you crash land on meaning you have no idea what the wind turbulence is going to be like, after trying turbines out in three separate games they are imo a waste of steel and i only normally build 1/2 to help with the power during the night time till i get geothermals up and running. Now even if there is a thunderstorm and the wind is howling out of your speakers your lucky if you generate  any power as they sit there doing nothing 70% of the time.

I would go more in depth but whats the point, seems you and tynan are basing a crash landing on earth at the moment. 

[Curs3d]

A small but annoying change is how stockpiles behave, before it was possible to drag a stock pile to multiple places and then cut off the path there (having multiple stockpiles act as one) which was a nice way to avoid having to make the stockpile rules over when you got new space available and had to expand. (was also nice to link single area stockpiles to each prisoner location and changing them all at the same time)

So the current behavior removes one of the stockpiles when you cut off the connection, the behavior seems a bit weird however.
When cutting the path between 2 stockpiles if you have one larger and one smaller stockpile the small one is not always removed, sometimes it is but sometimes it isn't. (size being how many squares they are).
I've also had several occasions now where I'm pruning a stockpile, the entire stockpile is removed (removing ~6 squares sometimes deletes the remaining 20 as well)

My issue is that sometimes I can remove half the stockpile (if I count by squares) and it works fine and sometimes I remove a 3rd or a 4th of it and the entire stockpile is deleted. (which is a real pain when you get more complicated stockpile rules and priorities going)
I've also removed one stockpile and accidentally removed removed a 10th or less of another stockpile and have it get deleted.

[Rock5]

I like how you ignore my points Rock.

As for realistic its not at all, you are talking about the wind on earth this is ment to be a planet you crash land on meaning you have no idea what the wind turbulence is going to be like, after trying turbines out in three separate games they are imo a waste of steel and i only normally build 1/2 to help with the power during the night time till i get geothermals up and running. Now even if there is a thunderstorm and the wind is howling out of your speakers your lucky if you generate  any power as they sit there doing nothing 70% of the time.

I would go more in depth but whats the point, seems you and tynan are basing a crash landing on earth at the moment. 

Man, don't jump to conclusions.

Firstly, I hadn't read your points yet and secondly, I was presenting my opinions. It's up to you to express your opinions.

Even though, yes, you could have a world where it's always windy, I think it was the consensus on that other topic that the changes to the wind turbine made it more balanced with solar panels, with only you, I believe, speaking up against it. And you only seem to be speaking against it because you seem to be experiencing some sort of bug. I hope you resolve the issue and get to reevaluate the turbine when it's working the way it's supposed to.

A small but annoying change is how stockpiles behave, before it was possible to drag a stock pile to multiple places and then cut off the path there (having multiple stockpiles act as one) which was a nice way to avoid having to make the stockpile rules over when you got new space available and had to expand. (was also nice to link single area stockpiles to each prisoner location and changing them all at the same time)

Yes I agree. The functionality was very useful. I was even considering asking for the ability to make multiple stockpile one even when they weren't originally one because sometime you can't make 1 large one to start off with. And instead they got rid of that feature altogether. Thank goodness for stockpile settings copy and paste. No wait, that's another EdB Interface feature that the vanilla game hasn't adopted yet. With this change it would have been the perfect time to implement copy and paste. Oh well.

[Curs3d]

On a more positive note: the new fire suppression is way way better then before, fires are no longer reserved so no more of people running through fires just to reach their own little square (and putting themselves on fire in the meanwhile), the entire group can now work on the same fire (the same square) which makes it much more efficient and much less annoying having multiple people with firefighting active.

[Vexare]

I was surprised to notice walls are no longer count towards beauty. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It sure makes things easier because I no longer have to replace rock walls with pretty wood ones anymore.

I don't like this change. I always thought the idea of going through the hassle of upgrading the interior walls of cave systems was to increase the comfort level of living in there and that bare chiseled rock walls would be less desirable and therefore less beauty factor. I think you should be encouraged to upgrade walls for that reason. It forces you to plan out better sleeping/eating areas first so your colonists have prettier living spaces while leaving storage areas unfinished.

I'd like a pleasant environment buff for my colonists if I've gone through the hassle of making a nicely bricked or carpeted floor and neatly stone-masonry or wood paneled walls. It's a lot of work for colonists to do for no reward.

[ManWithNoName]

W/e rock

[Panzer]

Maybe I am imagining things, but I think the overall pace is much slower this alpha. Wealth used to kinda snowball from some point on, now valuable stuff is really rare and I am really aching for some money. Might be just randy though not sending me enough raids, need to play more games to get more insight.
Apart from that, vomit everywhere and kinda awkward tales of burning cobras and sick colonists, but I love it

[Mithradates]

Maybe it's just playing on R.R on Extreme Challenge, but I think the price drop for items sold is a little steep. What a ship sells for $450 silver they will buy for about $70. Too much, in my opinion.