Battle Stations (made simple)

[Medio]

Hello, I love the game. Haven't been able to stop playing it, even in my sleep.

Now that that's out of the way.

Battle stations or a panic button. It would be nice to have a button or hot key which sounds an alarm of some sort (possible build item) that instantly drafts all colonists and sends them to a set position.

For instance:
1. Build Warning Klaxon
2. Default Position for colonist Battle Station (if not set) will be in their beds (sleeping spot).
3. Click on a colonist and set Battle Station. (another button beside the draft/undraft button will appear upon building and installing a warning klaxon).
4. Trigger Warning Klaxon.
5. All colonists are drafted and immediately move to their set battle stations (or bed if not set) unless manually moved.
6. Event happens.
7. Re-trigger Warning Klaxon.
8. All colonists undraft and move out from their current position to continue their priorities.

An example of how to use this is you can have noncombatants go into a "panic room" when the klaxon is triggered that has more defenses, while your combatants get in their firing positions.

If in the future, you want to make it more complex, you can build multiple klaxons and have it so you can assign colonists to specific Warning Klaxons and only the ones assigned will be drafted and sent to battle stations. In this way you can not draft your entire colony, and have multiple Klaxon for multiple regions, or just have specific people assigned fighting while the rest of your colony is business as usual.

It is annoying when I've tried to combat a group with only a few colonists and one of the undrafted walks into the crossfire. It's a bit unrealistic that someone would do this anyway. Also it has happened to me where a colonist is left in draft mode for an unnecessary amount of time because they were left out of immediate sight.
I feel this would go along with the gameplay nicely as it adds to the macromanage (versus micromanaging positions) feel of things.
People who want to continue micromanaging can still do so by just not building or using a Warning Klaxon.

[Johnny Masters]

Hey man, welcome to the forums. I don't mean to burst you bubble, but this suggestion is pretty hot lately, try and check one of those posts, there are some recent ones in a few pages back, might be worth checking it out.

(+1 of course)

[Medio]

edited.

[Haplo]

Right now there are two mods who have a colonist positioning system: one is JuliaEllies Battle Stations and the other is my Miscellaneous mod.
In Miscellaneous you have four keys to bind groups and positions, one key to release all colonists from draft mode and one key each for sending colonists to eat or sleep.

Edit: Sorry, I must be half asleep. I thought this was in the mod request section..

[Medio]

I'm a purest when it comes to games, so Modding is out of the question for me. It's a slippery slope to cheating (not fact, just my opinion). Plus I feel an ingame item that triggers the function would be necessary to keep some of the reality and their should be a bit of a price for the convenience (constructing the trigger). Plus an item allows for possibly infinite amounts of customization, if you read what I wrote about making it more complex in the original post.

[daft73]

I'm a purest when it comes to games, so Modding is out of the question for me. It's a slippery slope to cheating (not fact, just my opinion). Plus I feel an ingame item that triggers the function would be necessary to keep some of the reality and their should be a bit of a price for the convenience (constructing the trigger). Plus an item allows for possibly infinite amounts of customization, if you read what I wrote about making it more complex in the original post.

Being a purest is all fine and stuff, but don't sell yourself short. Whilst there are a few 'cheaty' mods out there, a majority just fill in the alpha 'gaps'. In fact a fair portion of the mods become vanilla, or at least aspects of them. Ui based being the most useful, imo, helping with the short-comings of the current alpha-state.

[Medio]

Yeah I understand your contribution, I just wanted to suggest something that was part of the gameplay environment instead of just a hot key for it.

[Medio]

I guess what I mean is, this is really a "qaulity of life" improvement. You made it exactly that, where I'm saying not just make it a "quality of life" improvement, make it an interactive game feature to help add depth.

[Medio]

Anyone who played age of empires 2 remembers the town center bell, best feature ever.

[Kegereneku]

Anyone who played age of empires 2 remembers the town center bell, best feature ever.

Gotta admit it was useful...
But Rimworld isn't a game about army doing army thing. Combat should even be a very rare event considering its gameplay.

As in the other thread I propose you the following :
- A Guard toggle, variation of the Draft toggle. Once pressed your colonist only leave their post to eat or sleep. Or alternatively, do other task but come back to "position" when they should be 'idling'.

thing is...Alpha10 will have a 'Fun' bar, colonist wandering to keep themselves happy, This would have to be OFF when in this mode.

For the rest... some people have suggested that during attack colonist don't wander away from the home region. Myself I just don't give them reason to do so in the first place, I check what I asked them to carry.

[Medio]

As to your guard toggle:
If in Alpha10 there is a "Fun" bar then this kind of job would have to only for the steadfast and strongwilled. Being that they could handle Guarding without going crazy. This is true in real life (8 years infantry, guard sucks and you will go crazy sometimes), and will make you have to choose carefully about who does the guard duty and forces you to make challenging decisions: "Well this guy is my best miner, but he is also the least likely to go crazy on guard duty." Which in turn adds depth to the game.

this is the wrong thread though. I'll repost in the other so don't reply to this here. Lets keep the flow going on Battle Stations in this thread.