A night shift or general schedule mechanic

[miah999]

Despite all the comparisons to Prison Architect: Rimworld is a very different game, and better in several ways. But there's one thing from PA I think I'd like to see. And that's the daily schedule it's quite a simple mechanic just a list of the hours in the day and some way to designate what folks should be doing during that at hour; such as work, eat, sleep, free time. This would help with the colonists social interactions by ensuring they're all in one place at least a couple hours a day. So they can all have a nice chat around the dinner table.

What about insomniacs? You say. They could ignore the sleep schedule, either fully or partially. 

One other possible addition could be when the world is generated the length of the day could be set, giving some variety to the scheduling possibilities, But I'm not sure how hard this would be for Tynan to code.

All suggestions welcome.

[Finjinimo]

I would like something like this.

I also like the idea that some personality traits might be more inclined to follow it rigidly, and some would be inclined to ignore it. Damn those surly independent types.

And perhaps threading into this idea a little...

Some kind of Colony Emergency Alarm that tells all your colonists to stay in the home area, or perhaps an "emergency area" or "panic room". It would cancel all other tasks and scheduling.

It could be an easy way to keep your non-combatants relatively safe without having to micro-manage them too much.

[miah999]

From Tynan on the KS comments...

"Colonist coordination is a very hard problem. But I've been wanting to do a 3-part regime (sleep/work/leisure) system for a while. Just another thing to get to eventually."

[SharpKris]

Such a system would require a manager or in other words an Overseer, i would love to see something like that (fallout style) 

[YBenjius]

I like Tynan's idea more then the suggestion of the OP. You shouldn't be dictating what the colonist do at certain times (e.g. eat at that time, go to the bathroom around 6) they still should have some kind of freedom to choose what they wanna do.

That three stage schedule sounds better. After all, they are not your prisoners.

[Dejix]

As much fun as it is to watch colonists sleep I think I would enjoy being able to set a schedule for some of the colonists. I would much rather have one or two colonists get up when the others go to bed so that they can keep watch and keep things going at night.

Speaking of some form of scheduler it would be nice if you could do the same for lights. Have them turn on and off at set times to help conserve power or just add a lived in feeling to the colony.

[British]

Speaking of some form of scheduler it would be nice if you could do the same for lights. Have them turn on and off at set times to help conserve power or just add a lived in feeling to the colony.

Aside from that, do we know if the "in darkness" debuff is still running when the colonists are actually sleeping ?

[Hypolite]

Nope, just checked.

[Tynan]

What do you think I am, some kind of amateur?

[Dejix]

Yay. No more fear of sleeping in the dark! Now the lights are even more in need of shutting off at night. XD

[Tynan]

Back to the topic, a scheduler is a reasonable idea but it'll probably have to wait due to being complicated to code and complex for players to learn.

[SpaceEatingTrex]

Back to the topic, a scheduler is a reasonable idea but it'll probably have to wait due to being complicated to code and complex for players to learn.

How complex are we considering making the scheduler? Although giving it a lot of functionality so that players have much greater control over colonists would certainly appeal to some players, I think a simple "Day Shift / Night Shift" toggle button would be enough to let people not have to fast forward through every night. That seems like it would be much simpler to implement.

[GC13]

How complicated a scheduler would you need to make? From what you said before, I got the impression that you could just do it with a few statements that check the time and say "okay, it's not work time: don't do this" for each work-related activity, etc...

[Spike]

Hmm.  How about a simple 24 hour day, broken up into 3 shifts.  Label one as "sleep".  Unless wounded or deathly tired, they will only sleep in that time shift.

[miah999]

Hmm.  How about a simple 24 hour day, broken up into 3 shifts.  Label one as "sleep".  Unless wounded or deathly tired, they will only sleep in that time shift.

There's already a thread on this sort of thing. http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=172.0