General Feedback

[Shake]

I've been playing the alpha client for a few days and thought I'd give my feedback on the game thus far. I understand this is early alpha so I assume some of the things that are problems for me right now are already being worked on or their solutions just aren't in the alpha client yet.

With that said, the biggest issue I've had thus far is that it feels really difficult to recruit new characters later in the game. I've been playing mostly on cassandra classic and played my first few games on chill callie classic and on seemingly all of my games on both settings I noticed that the frequeny of trade ships coming seems to drop over time significantly. Where in the first 30 minutes or so of a game I might get 2 slaver ships and 4 or 5 total trade ships, in the last hour of a game I'd be lucky to get 1 or 2 ships let alone a slaver. Similarly I don't think I ever saw a crashed escape pod or character traveling across the map in the later periods of the game. All this combined means that I basically couldn't recruit new characters except by capturing raiders but in 2 or 3 raids of 9-10 raiders each I would be lucky to incapacitate 1  raider.

The result of all this is that I slowly lose population to the point where the game is either not fun or I just straight up lose. I start losing 1 character every 1 to 2 raids and considering the strength of later game raids losing a couple of characters without the ability to get new ones is basically the end of the game in my experience.

I feel like right now the game is meant to be more about micromanaging a small group of settlers which is probably fun for some players, but I think the game would be a lot more fun if there were more ways to recruit new characters and it happened more frequently so it really felt like you were building a thriving colony/city out of nothing.

My second piece of feedback has to do with managing workers. I like the system thats in place now because it makes the game feel more like a simulation and not like an RTS, but at the same time I really dislike having to go into the overview and change settings quite often to try to get the effect I want.  The system wasn't intuitive for me at all, it took me 2 games to realize that I could even manage what each worker was doing and even then it just doesn't feel fun to micromanage. I think this game could really benefit from smarter AI in terms of workers and economy. For instance I often have 2-3 workers focused on mining who typically mine somewhat far from my base/beds, when they return to base to sleep they could pick up some metal, bring it back to my stockpile at base, then sleep and be more efficient. I think it would be great if the AI could do this for me, its not fun to have to right click and prioritize haul the metal on all 3 characters every time they sleep. Another example has to do with hauling food. If I'm coming out of an eclipse and have no food in storage and several hungry characters but one who is on the verge of a breakdown, the mildly hungry workers will just eat the food without dropping it at my stockpile and then going to the nutrient producer and this means the worker on the verge of breakdown is screwed. I wish workers would haul food to the stockpile even when hungry and then go get nutrients rather than just eating the food directly.

Lastly, I think either workers shouldn't have designated beds and should sleep wherever is most convenient, or we should be able to change their beds. When I'm mining into the side of the map my miners have to travel pretty far to sleep and it feels like half their day is spent moving to back and forth to base. I can build a dining area in my mine but I can't make new bedrooms because I can't change where they sleep. I think characters having their own rooms is kind of cool but I personally would prefer they sleep in the closest bed they can when tired.

[Galileus]

I feel like right now the game is meant to be more about micromanaging a small group of settlers which is probably fun for some players, but I think the game would be a lot more fun if there were more ways to recruit new characters and it happened more frequently so it really felt like you were building a thriving colony/city out of nothing

The game IS meant to be about a group of settlers and NOT about building a thriving colony/city Read up on forums - pretty much every point you bring up was discussed before.

Also, keep in mind the game is in VERY early stage of development. Sincerely, the fact that you get bored in the late game and that's when problems arise? Huge success

[palandus]

I agree with some of your points OP, but not all of them.

1) I do agree that having more Slave Traders or Escape pods later in the game would be beneficial, as for me, I have so many resources, but nothing to spend them on... When you have in excess of 15k Food and 10k Metal, what is there to buy, except people? Except when you can't find any slaver ships to purchase them from.

2) I agree that having more people might be nice, but not too many otherwise you really ARE micromanaging them. The current limit is what? 10? or 12? Colonists. If it could be increased to say something like 20 or so, that I think would be fine, otherwise think of how many calculations your PC will have to do to handle each one's individual AI?

3) Incapitation seems to be associated with your current population. If its too high, you can't incapicate and it kills them instead. I've found that if the next shot should only take them to 30/100 HP, but you have maximum population, the next hit will instead kill them. I'd like it if instead of killing them, but not being able to recruit them, we would have an actual reason to sell them as prisoners to Slaver Ships. If we can't recruit them due to maximum population, sell them!

4) I'm ok with having a slowly building up colony over time, but not too quickly that I lose track of each person. I think that is Tynan's philosophy that we should be able to have more people but not so many that they just become a "number" rather than a "living" AI.

5) As far as changing beds, its quite simple. Simply make sure that their current beds are walled/door-ed off, and change the beds to PRISONER-only. This will prevent them from using the beds, and instead will seek out the nearest untaken bed. And then, switch that bed back to normal, and it will be unclaimed. A bit dirty for forcing the changeover but it works.

6) I personally would like it that the farther into the game you get access to better stuff. I see colonists complaining about nutrient paste. Why can't we process the nutrient paste into something more tasty, as a simple example?

7) As for raiders, I'd like it if we could invest in a turret that could hit targets with Enfields or M26s. Otherwise you have to send your people out to take them on.

[thebadman]

For all pop-limit oinkers - Randy Random don't have any limits, though raiders almost always die or get incapacitated in cross fire with 5hp, you can still get multiple slaver ships even if you have 20 or 100 colonists already.

Imo its best AI story teller because you can have cool fights without these lame turrets and OP mines to keep odds fair.

[BattleFate]

I wonder if maybe instead of reducing the likelyhood of having a traveller pass by, or incapacitating raiders once you get a higher population, that instead it would limit your ability to recruit them. It should never be nil, but could perhaps be as low as like 0.5% each try. This way you could actually see yourself acquiring prisoners. I usually build myself an elaborate prison, with a dozen beds and their own nutrient paste dispenser and dining area. But 99% of the time it's empty and the rest it's got a single prisoner in it. I'd like to see myself with 3-4 occupants most of the time. With perhaps as many as 8 or 9 at a time. When you have many prisoners increase the amount of slave traders which come by (but maybe they don't have anyone to sell, or have more useless characters). Or you could periodically execute them to keep fear higher in the colony.

Perhaps instead of an artificial limit on population like no more than 15 colonists, there could be a dynamic one. When you try to recruit, it takes into account the following: Are there free beds? Are they private quarters? Is there enough food production to support more population? Are there available weapons (with higher quality weapons being worth more in this calculation than a simple handgun)? How long has it been since there's been a fatality? How often do colonists get hurt? Are there many incompatible colonist already (a warden who constantly beats a prisoner isn't likely to be that prisoner's friend once he's a full member of the colony, or a religious colonist may not want to live in a colony filled with courtesans and assassins)? etc.

Depending on these answers a prisoner may or may not be inclined to join. So you can't recruit if you don't have the ability to support them, or your colonists tend to be unhappy most of the time, or your colonists are always dying... If a prisoner is too happy, they might not want to join if they see it's likely they'll be less happy as a colonist (why join the colony to work hard for little reward if you can sit back in prison, being well fed, taken care of and enjoying leasure time with the warden)? Might make using fear tactics on your prisoners more appealing... (you might not want to become a servant for the colony if you're trading in your casual conversations, but maybe you're more likely to if you are always being beaten, or periodically see other prisoners being executed).

Just a thought. And I think it builds off an idea I read earlier in this thread...