Your Cheapest Ideas

[GeneralJeremiah]

I didn't read all 300 pages here and I recently began playing the game but here is my suggestion.  I believe it would be a cheap consideration.

When you launch colonists into space to save them it would be cool if they were then added to a list of saved colonists.  A player could then choose one of them when starting a future colony to be their elder or their character to start with.  It would make sense since if they are in a space ship they could be dropped via an escape pod down to the starting site.  I think it would be a somewhat cheap addition but I'm unsure,  however i do know that players would find this very appealing and the satisfaction gained from this addition would be greater than the cost to implement. 

Another suggestion that would not be so cheap...  If not in the game currently i don't believe it is...
When two colonists have a baby the baby would have a chance of obtaining the parents traits and possibly a percentage of their skill.  It would be a cool way to have improved generations and would add depth to breeding versus taking in newcomers. 

Thanks for reading and great game!  Really enjoying it.  -J*

[Selvek]

Make plasteel walls not burn.

Agreed.  Plasteel should not be flammable, unlike steel and stone which clearly should be flammable.

[MerlosTheMad]

A health condition that basically amounts to a settler being infested with aliens. If you fail to treat them fast enough they explode and megaspiders poor out.

[mumblemumble]

Ruins : a starting area which has ruins it it, marked on the map, containing walls, some equipment and furniture, and perhaps other items : essentially a derelict base.

They disappear with time, but on world gen can be used as a very handy EASIER start, so one can almost instantly have housing, a storage area, and maybe a few other dodads depending on your luck.

Would essentially be another option into the mix to enable easy starts, without needing to have the difficulty lower persay.

[aethelbutts]

Set priorities by hovering over the task box and just pressing the number. It'd be way easier than click-cycling, especially in those times when half the colony dies and you have to reconfigure everyone.

I realize those keys are bound to time, but just have it take precedence if you're hovering over a work dialog and have set priorities checked.

[AngleWyrm]

Set priorities by hovering over the task box and just pressing the number. It'd be way easier than click-cycling, especially in those times when half the colony dies and you have to reconfigure everyone. I realize those keys are bound to time, but just have it take precedence if you're hovering over a work dialog and have set priorities checked. I'd like to have the ability to save/restore work priority templates. Maybe I set everyone to low priority on cleaning but high priority on firefighting and healing, just as a standard operating procedure. And I might have typical uses of my pawns; maybe I would have Building, Security and Maintenance as general categories to save, restore and assign to any pawn. Work classifications are a similar concept, but without fluidity.

[Birrihappyface]

I may have mentioned this in a different thread about four months ago, but what about a radio tower that can be constructed in the colony, not under a roof, and it allows you to see trading caravans, raid parties, and friendlies on the world map within three hexes. You'd get a small notification in a yellow envelope saying "A [Traveler type] has been detected by the radar tower moving towards the colony's location.They will arrive in roughly [Time to arrival in hours]." It could require power equivalent to either that of a geothermal generator, or half of one, depending on balance issues. I see no reason why it would be overpowered. My only concern is that you don't have a system in place that actually has caravans travelling the planet, and they're still just events that randomly pop up.

[b0rsuk]

I may have mentioned this in a different thread about four months ago, but what about a radio tower that can be constructed in the colony, not under a roof, and it allows you to see trading caravans, raid parties, and friendlies on the world map within three hexes. You'd get a small notification in a yellow envelope saying "A [Traveler type] has been detected by the radar tower moving towards the colony's location.They will arrive in roughly [Time to arrival in hours]." It could require power equivalent to either that of a geothermal generator, or half of one, depending on balance issues. I see no reason why it would be overpowered. My only concern is that you don't have a system in place that actually has caravans travelling the planet, and they're still just events that randomly pop up.

Which is why it should go into its own thread. Because it would need a little bit of extra work. But I like the suggestion.

[Birrihappyface]

Another idea would be an event, where colonists that have previously been kidnapped from your colony will manage to break out and return to the colony with various bruises, possibly scars, or even harvested organs. A group of raiders may be on their tail, or maybe a pack of hostile animals that was following them. It could also be an interesting feature to call a pirate gang and do a prisoner exchange. One of your prisoners (previously their member) for one of your colonists. I thought of this because I got a prison break event within thirty seconds of a wanderer joining. I'm sorry, usually I come to this thread with a basic idea, and then realize it may be harder to perform than once thought.

[crossed]

Lower the raid sizes on higher difficulties but make tiles with overhead mountain (for some reason...) add to your colony's wealth (a lot!! > ).
This way you could still turtle in a mountain base and mow down hundreds of raiders with killboxes, but it would also be possible to survive without using such strategies (maybe)

[kfsone]

My new-player experience was pretty amazeballs for a so-called "alpha", huge kudos. Gameplay: fun; Depth: Reasonable for /release/; Complexity: Manageable; Polish: Beta-quality.

I felt some tech-debt here and there, that might be worth attacking, like hitting 'esc' at the landing site selection screen taking you back to the main menu, etc.

Cheap ideas:

. Purely player-aesthetic windowed wall section, (damn it, I *want* to put windows even if they do zip),
  Future iterables: (not cheap?) happiness, illumination, destructable (enemies can break in via),
. Interior vs Exterior walls, interior includes built-in wiring,
  Future iterables: bonus to bedrooms with int walls, diff strengths/flamability, int/ext insulation,
. Allow gender, maybe name, fields to be locked during randomization,
. Add weighting for walk speed to your A*/Djikstra (if that's not cheap,
  you didn't say you'd hired monkeys),
. Wall upgrades (a build order that does an auto-demo with loss of mats
until you have chance to make it do demo-then-build, seems like mostly
ui work?)

[Definitely not Sceaudufax]

I think I saw one other brief post from two years ago about this. I also saw a mod for it. However, being able to follow a colonist with the camera would be super awesome. This function is available in the game Banished. It's nice to just follow your little guy around and watch them as they go about their day.

[Wanderer_joins]

Planning tools: drawing circles

[deshara218]

Depression mental break: if a puppet is too busy recovering from pantherwounds to go play horseshoes & has a mental break, instead of jumping out of bed, hobbling outside on their one remaining leg and punching a panther again until it kills him, how about the puppet just gets depressed and doesn't get out of bed until the break passes, even if he's recovered already & occupying a valuable medical bed.
Lightweight solution to the problem of berserk breaks causing a berserk break loop

[deshara218]

Sorry for double post: toggle plant zone auto harvest off. Particularly for hay (for wildlife) but also so I can tell my farmers to stop cutting down crops once our stores are full (so if something happens you don't have to replant, you could leave crop in the field) and so I can create tree-lined paths differentiated from my lumber farm