A night shift or general schedule mechanic

[miah999]

... After all, they are not your prisoners.

Who says they're not. 

[Tynan]

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.

Hmm, interesting. That aspect is doable.

[Dejix]

A detailed time based scheduler with lots of options would work for some fun things, such as a curfew or light/device timing, and lead to lots of other time based fun. Not the simplest of things to implement I'm sure but a fun thought for later on.

The initial idea of a night shift was based of a simple shift idea as above (2-4 shifts a day). I would even accept a toggle somewhere that just switches pm to am in the colonist ai for when to prefer sleep. Instead of going to bed at 10pm, or whatever, the colonist would opt to go to bed at 10am (assuming that time is a factor in how the little ants function in the colony and not some other magic of course).

[starlight]

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

What happens during the sleep period? If nothing, then people will fast forward.

How do you handle events like:
1. An attack.
2. A mini-crisis: Some equipment broke, a fire, etc. (Do we have any of those implemented)?
3. Power failure

If you have a big colony, and you want patrolling to prevent:
1. Thieves
2. Raids
3. Animals
4. Equipment failure

How do you set that up?
Will it be military only or civilians also?
When do people who have night duty sleep?

[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

What happens during the sleep period? If nothing, then people will fast forward.

How do you handle events like:
1. An attack.
2. A mini-crisis: Some equipment broke, a fire, etc. (Do we have any of those implemented)?
3. Power failure

If you have a big colony, and you want patrolling to prevent:
1. Thieves
2. Raids
3. Animals
4. Equipment failure

How do you set that up?
Will it be military only or civilians also?
When do people who have night duty sleep?

Currently you can wake up a colonist to go take care of something, but they don't like it. Almost every thing else you mention (i.e. violent actions) is currently handled simply by drafting and issuing direct orders, colonists will not sleep while drafted.

[Spike]

Most of these have been discussed in various places, or answered by watching videos... 

From watching videos, you can draft a sleeper and give manual orders.  I'm not sure what happens if you tell a sleeper to prioritize a work job, if they'll get up or not - I'm guessing they will.

Attacks are handled currently by having turrets up and drafting your colonists & moving them into position to defend.  Equipment failures are in the game, and colonists will go repair things as needed.  Power failures are handled by having a decent power supply set up.

Patrolling has also been brought up several times, and seems like it is a low priority or won't happen.

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.

What happens during the sleep period? If nothing, then people will fast forward.
Will it be military only or civilians also?
When do people who have night duty sleep?

The way I'd see it would be to just have a generic 8 hour period chosen per individual for when they will sleep.  That way you could stagger the sleep shifts so that you have some up all the time.

[starlight]

Most of these have been discussed in various places, or answered by watching videos... 

From watching videos, you can draft a sleeper and give manual orders.  I'm not sure what happens if you tell a sleeper to prioritize a work job, if they'll get up or not - I'm guessing they will.

Attacks are handled currently by having turrets up and drafting your colonists & moving them into position to defend.  Equipment failures are in the game, and colonists will go repair things as needed.  Power failures are handled by having a decent power supply set up.

Patrolling has also been brought up several times, and seems like it is a low priority or won't happen.

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.

What happens during the sleep period? If nothing, then people will fast forward.
Will it be military only or civilians also?
When do people who have night duty sleep?

The way I'd see it would be to just have a generic 8 hour period chosen per individual for when they will sleep.  That way you could stagger the sleep shifts so that you have some up all the time.

How do you handle patrols in this scheme of things?
I am saying this after seeing how complex things get in Dwarf Fortress.
Setting military up is a real pain......

Not having patrols is also a pain, not very realistic, and will not work in preventing raids.......

[miah999]

As the game stands right now you don't prevent raids, they prevent you.

But here is a scheduling option, all colonist have an innate work day, that you don't have to fiddle with they sleep,work,play, in that order eating when necessary (This can vary based on their traits). What the player does is assign them to a shift in the overview screen, each shift starts 8 hours after the previous (assuming a 24 hour day)

So the daily routine would end up looking like this.
Alpha Shift: Sleep/Work/Play
Beta Shift:  Play/Sleep/Work
Gamma Shift: Work/Play/Sleep

Make sense?

[starlight]

As the game stands right now you don't prevent raids, they prevent you.

But here is a scheduling option, all colonist have an innate work day, that you don't have to fiddle with they sleep,work,play, in that order eating when necessary (This can vary based on their traits). What the player does is assign them to a shift in the overview screen, each shift starts 8 hours after the previous (assuming a 24 hour day)

So the daily routine would end up looking like this.
Alpha Shift: Sleep/Work/Play
Beta Shift:  Play/Sleep/Work
Gamma Shift: Work/Play/Sleep

Make sense?

When you have a bigger base, you will want X% (where X will vary depending upon your story-teller) of your base to be out, looking for enemies attacking you.

If you are going to play the harder difficulty levels, it will be suicidal not to have a active military patrolling the outskirts of your base.

[miah999]

Currently there is no patrolling, and you don't maintain an active military, auto turrets take care of the proactive security.

I'm not sure that patrols will ever be a necessity. I think you'll have to play the game to understand, but right now the bigger your base the less you'd need a patrol, as your defenses will slow attackers to a crawl and you can draft and respond in more then enough time.

And besides my system would still work, as "Active Military" patrols wold be "work."

[starlight]

Currently there is no patrolling, and you don't maintain an active military, auto turrets take care of the proactive security.

I'm not sure that patrols will ever be a necessity. I think you'll have to play the game to understand, but right now the bigger your base the less you'd need a patrol, as your defenses will slow attackers to a crawl and you can draft and respond in more then enough time.

And besides my system would still work, as "Active Military" patrols wold be "work."

I haven't played the game (yet) so you may be right.

Just a question. How expensive are turrets in in-game cash?
How effective are they?

Now I have a different issue: With a big base, the turrets will identify the threat for you, and slow the attackers, then where is the challenge?
Also, wouldn't (on the higher difficulty levels), the number of raiders will proportionately higher as your base size goes up.

Otherwise, yes, if patrols are set up, then they could work with the shifts thing. You could set up some people to work (patrol) in each shift.

[miah999]

A turret cost 90 metal, and can be upgraded through research to a 5 round burst fire. In my experience one turret can hold off 2-3 raiders, without assistance. But this is dependent on the raiders' armament. Higher level raids are often armed with grenades and the like that can make quick work of a turret.

And yes the number of raiders goes up, sometimes very quickly, turrets only buy you time in a large well organized raid. Your base design has a lot to do with how much time they'll buy you. A combination of sandbags for cover and slowing enemy movement, backup with turrets and a mine field, can allow 6 colonist fend off up to 20 raiders. Keep in mind you may spend much of the game with 6 or less in your colony, so even a raid of 8-10 enemies can be quite the threat without an adequate defensive line.

The thing I'd worry about with a patrol, is a single guy out on the perimeter is likely to be taken out before he can do much, or get to cover, raider seem to prioritize shooting a colonist over taking out static defenses. And of course eventually Randy Random will throw 42 raiders at you, and you're all dead.