My laundry list of ideas

[skiddyfisk]

Howdy there. I've had several thoughts while playing this, and felt it best to just make one thread. Here goes:

Solar flares suck, because there's no defense against them. I propose an additional type of wall and flooring that protects a room against the effects of flares. These would, of course, be quite expensive, but the contents of a room fully protected in such a manner would function normally in the event of a magnetic storm. ONLY the contents - so you better include a couple batteries in your doomsday bunker, too.

- Colonists that refuse to work also suck. While obviously not everybody is capable of research, doctoring, repairs, and so forth, nobody with an able enough body to wander around the map is incapable of pushing a broom or hauling potatoes. Make those nobles good for something!

- limits to power transmission; add a larger "arterial" power cable for the main lines from your hydro plant/solar farm to base, and then smaller ones to branch out and power individual buildings or rooms. Running more juice through a conduit than it can handle can result in fast condition decay and fires if it's not kept in shape.

- jail cell doors losing power should be a potential avenue of escape, making power management more important

- room ownership; colonists with a private room should clean it and have some amount of free will with decoration when not otherwise assigned - random chance they build a chair, tables, or move furniture around/change flooring as space allows


I also posted a few in the cheap ideas thread which I'm copying here for discussion:

- assign batteries to devices; a battery directly adjacent to a piece of powered equipment will power ONLY that device, and only when the device is getting no other power, and not feed into the general grid. this lets you keep key equipment running longer during low-power situations without micromanaging all the on/off switches on everything

- power switches; an easy way to toggle power on and off for entire buildings or areas, this would just be a power conduit tile with an on/off function like the lights have. (I currently do this by just selling and rebuilding the same bit of cable as needed)

- a "go to home" hotkey that centers the view on your base. (Defined as the geographic center of your home area, or your food dispenser, or some such thing)


Apologies if any of these have been flogged to death already; I only skimmed the first couple pages of the forum.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Solar flares suck, because there's no defense against them. I propose an additional type of wall and flooring that protects a room against the effects of flares. These would, of course, be quite expensive, but the contents of a room fully protected in such a manner would function normally in the event of a magnetic storm. ONLY the contents - so you better include a couple batteries in your doomsday bunker, too.

A Faraday Wall, eh? I could get behind that. In fact, I'd get so far behind it that I'd combine a geothermal generator, my grow-room, my comms room and my commissary into one room.

That way, even during a flare, nothing that isn't terribly important is effected. Food continues to be harvested and continues to be available from the paste dispenser, so people don't starve.

- Colonists that refuse to work also suck. While obviously not everybody is capable of research, doctoring, repairs, and so forth, nobody with an able enough body to wander around the map is incapable of pushing a broom or hauling potatoes. Make those nobles good for something!

I'd be okay with this, if folks got a morale penalty for being assigned to do something they hate. Nobs, of course, think that manual labor is beneath them, but if it's the choice between slinging spuds and starving, they should damn well be willing to sling spuds.

- limits to power transmission; add a larger "arterial" power cable for the main lines from your hydro plant/solar farm to base, and then smaller ones to branch out and power individual buildings or rooms. Running more juice through a conduit than it can handle can result in fast condition decay and fires if it's not kept in shape.

This is one of those things that sounds good in theory but would be like taking a chainsaw to your processor - no longer does the game need to track simply the electrical grid, now it has to track the load on each individual tile.

I'd say no, not without multi-threading. And even with multi-threading, there's more important things to be done, like epic 150+ colonist superfortresses.

- jail cell doors losing power should be a potential avenue of escape, making power management more important.

I'd think that jail cell doors would fail-safe to "shut and not opening," rather than "power's out? Well, walk on out, Mr. Prisoner." In fact, it seems that all the doors do just that - colonists can open and shut them manually, but nobody else can. Presumably these doors have a backup mechanical lock, but under ordinary circumstances they open right up for your colonists automatically.

- room ownership; colonists with a private room should clean it and have some amount of free will with decoration when not otherwise assigned - random chance they build a chair, tables, or move furniture around/change flooring as space allows.

Let's not, because they could (a) easily drain my metal a lot, and (b) probably do something stupid because making an AI that can intelligently lay out a room which could be of any kind of wacky dimensions or preexisting design. Especially since I tend to quarter my courtesans in my canteens and an oaf in the grow-room, and occasionally someone in an armory if room is getting short. I don't want to find my colonists are starving because a courtesan decided to rip down the paste dispenser to install a flower pot!

[skiddyfisk]

Well, changing the rug color could be free, since it's entirely cosmetic. And the area they will change could be the lesser of the room they're in OR a radius around their owned bed. And/or limit it strictly to chairs, tables, plants, and cosmetic stuff. OR make the stuff the colonists place not cost anything, but not sell for anything either, and limit it to nonfunctional decorative stuff (again, tables, chairs, flower pots, rug color)

That is a valid point about the power cables; I think it's still a decent idea were it not for that, though. :b

As for the cell doors, I don't want to nitpick about the specifics of powered sliding door failsafe modes. I just think "power outage in the brig wing leads to jailbreak" is a reasonable idea. Maybe it'd be better as a story event or whatever?

[killerx243]

For the doors it seems that the colonists need to pry them open. Sure prisoners could do it but it would take two since they are handcuffed and can't push both sides open. The restraints would also make their jailbreak attempt pretty difficult, seeing as they are unarmed and walk into a hallway with a bunch of m16 wielding colonists. It would be much more reasonable if they tried breaking through a wall to make a run for it then risk navigating your base.

[skiddyfisk]

Difficult, sure. It could be a low-percentage thing.

[palandus]

I think for classes that don't do any labor should be programmed to do other things.

Since Nobles are all about talking and stuff, they should go around having social chats with everyone all the time. Since a Social Chat gives a positive buff, having him go around a lot will make the colony overall happier and in a better mood. Or allow the Noble to give "Speech"(s). This is similiar to Social Chat, but grant a larger bonus and for longer.

[skiddyfisk]

I can get behind that.

[Untrustedlife]

For the doors it seems that the colonists need to pry them open. Sure prisoners could do it but it would take two since they are handcuffed and can't push both sides open. The restraints would also make their jailbreak attempt pretty difficult, seeing as they are unarmed and walk into a hallway with a bunch of m16 wielding colonists. It would be much more reasonable if they tried breaking through a wall to make a run for it then risk navigating your base.

So, like a crowbar.