Brainstorm of ideas I think might make the game more immersive

[BattleFate]

Hey everyone,

This is my first time posting in the forums. I've been reading over the general and modding forums quite a bit, but haven't yet looked too deeply into the ideas forum here, so please forgive me if many of these ideas have been put forward before.

I guess before I begin, let me say that this game is awesome. I haven't really stopped playing it since I got it when 254 came out. I even play hookey at work in order to get more play time. So none of these ideas are a criticism on the way the game is. Only ideas that I thought of that may or may not be any good.

I thought I'd just put a big list out there of things I've thought of and see what people think of some of these things.

Walls/Doors:
Wooden Door: Requires wood (not metal). Doesn't require power. Needs to open and close manually, which is slower than a powered automatic door, but faster than an unpowered automatic door. Can come in different iterations (light-duty, heavy-duty) which affect cost and HP, but not flammability. Highly flammable. Less durable than metal doors. If adding wood as a resource isn't a good idea, then this could simple be a 'basic door' instead, being made of metal, but with no option for automatic open/close. If metal though, highly-flammable doesn't make sense.

Cargo Doors: Doors which cover two or three tiles. Opened or closed state can be toggled manually only, and only with power. Heavy duty, high durability and non-flammable. Perhaps an option (research-able?) is a battery backup allowing you to toggle the open-close state once when power is out. Could work well as a gate to a main entrance or courtyard, or if vehicles are implemented could be garage doors...

Reinforced metal doors: Non-flammable, high-HP, perhaps only available with some research. Requires more metal to make, or perhaps manually upgrading a door once already in place. Perhaps too heavy to open manually, so only works with power. Perhaps with the battery backup option also, allowing a few open-closes without power or to 'lock' the door in the open state once until power is restored?

Isolation door: If any sort of viral disease is ever thought of, it can't pass through this type of door unless an infected person goes through it. Good to mark off a medical bay, or possible for an external airlock type deal. Only effective with an 'Isolation' wall, which is the wall equivalent of the same. They would have a slightly different appearance, perhaps something in a white hue, to allow for a true 'med-bay' type feel. Research-able.

Reinforced walls. Low-flammability, higher HP. Again either requiring manual upgrading after a regular wall is built or simply being it's own separate build menu item. Probably requires research to enable.

Shielded walls/doors. Highly expensive. Perhaps low HP. Perhaps requiring a new resource which isn't available yet (lead?). It would allow any electrical equipment within a room made entirely with shielded walls/doors to be protected from solar flares. Probably requiring research to build.

Gun-holes: Can be built into reinforced walls/doors to allow colonists to shoot through them while receiving 90% cover. However takes a long time to retrofit a wall/door for this, and if the wall/door is on fire, the colonist manning that position also catches fire (hit it with a Molotov and the colonist is having a bad time).

The walls/doors options above, they could all either be a separate build menu item, or I think might work best for some/all of them to have an 'upgrade' option available when a single or group of walls/doors is selected. This would allow you to designate those to be re-built into the new walls when a colonist has time.

Defenses:
The initial iteration of the turret should be research-able, and only manually controlled. Requiring a colonist to man it. It would provide cover to the colonist equivalent to a sandbag, and if the colonist is killed/incapped, then the turret goes 'offline' until manned anew. If the turret is destroyed while a colonist is inside, then a 1 square explosion would happen, killing the colonist and hurting (though not necessarily killing) other nearby colonists/walls/doors/etc.

Auto Turret Upgrade allows the turret to be unmanned. This allows your colonist to man his own gun, but the turret accuracy is likely equivalent to a colonist with a shooting skill of 5. So it may be more accurate or less so after being unmanned, depending on which colonist you used. This should be a turret-by-turret upgrade, allowing you to have some automatic and some manual, depending on your play-style. Should this allow a manual-control override in case you want to man it with a more accurate colonist?

Other turret upgrades, including increasing damage, accuracy and re-fire rate. Perhaps only allowing a turret to accept one or two upgrades max, so you have to chose between a faster turret with more damage but requiring manual control, or an auto turret with increased accuracy, but firing more slowly and doing less damage than the previous example. Perhaps each upgrade in a turret would increase it's explosion radius by 1? Not sure if that's a good idea or not... But then again the max explosion size you could have with 2 upgrades would be 3, which is the same explosion size they have right now... so maybe.

Concrete 'sandbags.' Filling regular sandbags with concrete instead. This would allow more HP before the sandbag is destroyed and remove all flammability from it. But you couldn't sell it back afterwards. you'd have to haul it away like debris if you wanted it moved (which could be good or bad depending on if you simply want to move it to a new location or get rid of it altogether). Of course this would cost more than regular sandbags.

Food:
eating raw potatoes or onions would make your colonists unhappy, but not as much as eating raw meat. Eating raw raspberries or agave though does not make then unhappy. In fact raw raspberries might even make them happy. Eating raw food would restore less 'hunger' than cooked food, which in turn restores less than nutrient paste. Nutrient paste would remain as is, but cooked food would either negate any negative effects or even add some positive ones, depending on the food.

This might require food to be sorted into a few categories though, so not sure if it's plausible or desired. If so, said categories would be:
- meat (very unhappy from eating raw, but gives most hunger benefit uncooked)
- root vegetables (unhappy from eating raw, but gives more hunger benefit uncooked than 'lower' categories)
- other veggies (no unhappiness from eating raw, but only some hunger benefit uncooked)
- fruits (some happiness from eating raw, but very little hunger benefit).

Nutrient paste would be generated from the dispensers as it is, but if categories are used, dispensers could be programmed to use one category of food before another or not at all, should more than one be available. This would allow you to chose to leave your fruits untouched for when power is out, or to use them first to maximize their hunger benefit, as nutrient paste always gives the same amount of hunger, which is the highest you can get from any source.

If food categories are used, then you could assign hydroponics tables to only grow certain types. Perhaps allowing the food event to only wipe out certain categories which are growing, or all of them.


Colonists/Prisoners/slaves:
Prisoners don't always have to join you as a full-colonist. If you want to talk to him and convince him of your cause then you can do so (perhaps some colonists convinced in that way will turn on you when the next raid comes around, indicating that they didn't truly accept to join but were simply pretending?).

What if you don't want to allow them the freedom of your base for fear of them turning on you in the next raid, or you keep capturing nobles, and you want to force them to work rather than letting them chose not to. You would then beat them, or execute other prisoners to increase their fear. Once their fear is sufficiently high, then they would join your colony as a slave instead of a colonist. They would always remain shackled, slowing their movement. They would never be able to participate in protecting the colony, but they could be made to do any manual labour task regardless of their 'profession.'

This could possibly require a new 'jailer' task, or fold it into the warden responsibilities. Which would be to feed your slaves and keep them sufficiently scared so they don't try to escape. Or perhaps to make them happy so that they could be convinced in the future to join your colony properly. A jailer (warden?) would also automatically try to recapture a slave which is trying to escape, which could happen at any time that they are unhappy and not scared enough. But since they are shackled, unless your warden is on the other side of the map, he should have no trouble recapturing one. Once a slave is recaptured, he will not try to escape again for several days, allowing you time to correct the issue which led to his attempt in the first place.

You could perhaps work your slaves to death, never allowing them to eat or rest, or you could treat them with respect and increase their happiness. If they are happy, then you can later convert a slave (with some interaction from the warden) to a colonist.

So again, happiness would be to convert prisoners or slaves into colonist (or to prevent slaves from trying to escape), and fear would be used to convert prisoners into slaves and to keep slaves from trying to escape.

Any slaves purchased from a slave trader would automatically be a slave in the colony until converted into a normal colonist. A slave trader will buy either prisoners or slaves from you. Although perhaps they will pay more for a slave than they will for a prisoner of the same type, simply because the work of converting them to slave is already done.

I guess that's it for now. I imagine this post is ridiculously long at this point. Not all of these ideas have been thoroughly thought out so they may have significant flaws, or be impossible to implement. I present them only for discussion on their strengths, and to give Tynan some ideas he may not have thought of already.