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[benjaminisar]

Cheap ideas:
Environment: Rivers / Lakes - makes water easier to obtain, but cannot be crossed easily. Also, they can be a food source (fish).
Flora/Fauna: "Monster events" - once in a blue moon, a very large predator of sorts shows up, wreaking havoc and destroying buildings to get to the yummy humans inside. After a tough battle, large amounts of food is provided.
Flora/Fauna: Each time a world is rolled, a color "theme" could also be rolled. Imagine that all animals had patches of color on their beaks, pelt, claws, eyes etc., and these were subject to change from game to game (like Starcraft II units, for example). I think this could contribute to the feeling of uniqueness from game to game.
Flora/Fauna: Arachnids or insectlikes (or both). Some of these could even form eusocial colonies you'd have to dispose of before being able to fully exploit the land (as they would otherwise eat anyone getting too close).

[AspenShadow]

Feeling the love as well Blitz 

I try to avoid this thread considering the amount of very expensive ideas that end up posted here and ruin the purpose of the thread. But...

A simple thought that occurred to me is that in the beginning of the game you could build a campfire in the centre of your sleeping spots to light up the night (which I do think needs to be a bit darker), it serves a multi-function of being a light, heat source (Mood modifier), scaring away animals and possibly allowing colonists to roast squirrels before they can engineer the paste dispenser. It's very low-tech and all-in-all I feel it could be well-served as the first object a new player builds in-game to help keep their colonists well and fairly happy until they learn the ropes.

[Tynan]

I'll just drop in to note that the vast majority of the ideas in this thread aren't anywhere close to being cheap.

This is to be expected; you guys aren't game developers so you won't really know how hard something is to make. But I just to help everyone, I'll reiterate the basic idea of this thread.

An idea is cheap if a developer could sit down today and have the feature finished in four hours or less.

Please think about your ideas and post them elsewhere if they don't fit this description.

[Semmy]

Just a tought that popped to mind.

Why not make rock debris into a building material.
Make it so we can use it to construct roads or sandbag like contraptions so we dont have to spend precious metals

[krockobil]

i think that its the cheap ideas that are the best!
Myself i love the randomness of storytellers..

Ideas for random chance for:
* Double pirate raid
* a pirate suicide bomber (makes player need to think more tactic)
* pirate convoy bypassing with hostage (getting close or attacking trigger them hostile)
* chance that a captured hostage have a gun and starts fighting
* chance that there is a illness spreading

[British]

A supposedly really cheap one (that hopefully hasn't been proposed already, though my search came back empty): have a Next colonist and Previous colonist in the colonists' tabs.
Possibly even as tabs...
The order would be the one from the Overview.

Ideally, display the names of the next and previous colonists somewhere.

That would make it so much easier to check each colonist (until a future dedicated panel ? ).

[Produno]

I actually completely forgot this was a cheap ideas thread after reading some comments and getting carried away. So ignore my other post here (for now), they certainly wernt cheap.

Now for some cheap ideas..

Battery powered sentry guns rather than mains feed. Possibly make them portable but thats probably beyond cheap .

Change the storage square to a container so its a bit more representable of some sort of storage.

Maybe add a global capacity to the storage box and make small and large boxes.

Prison doors or reinforced doors. Can be the same skin as the normal doors but with higher hit points.

Im not sure if this would be cheap or not but a chance on grenade weapon to explode or Molotov's to set the user on fire if the user is hit with bullets. Would be fun with Molotov's .

Ive seen people throw Molotov's on the ground for raiders to run through. Maybe add a fuel item that can be built that has a long burning time. Throwing Molotov's on the ground to set traps would then be a viable option.

Whenever i see people build in caves theirs alot of rubble generated on the floor and looks messy. No one seems to have the time to keep it tidy, i think this could be slowed down a little. Its more obvious when you have carpet layed.


I see theirs a force fire option on people/raiders, well what about a force fire on stuff like batteries so traps can be set causing big explosions.
On that note full batteries should have bigger explosions .


I hope most of these are cheap but i guess it depends how complex your engine is, or if you mean just coding or art aswell.

 
Edit : something i forgot to mention. Currently you get an alert when raiders attack? How about removing this untill an early warning beakon is placed. This would add surprise attacks. Possibly even remove the warning when they land untill you built a specific item.

[DeltaV]

What about batteries that you can set exclusive to one thing? So you could have backup power for, say, specifically only the lights and doors that was separate from the main supply.

[Reaver00]

What about batteries that you can set exclusive to one thing? So you could have backup power for, say, specifically only the lights and doors that was separate from the main supply.

I like this idea and it would mesh well with my previous idea of a world with large amounts of time spent in the dark.

[GC13]

I like the idea of a dedicated battery. I recommend that it be something that you must place directly adjacent to the object in question (in part to alleviate the need for a separate kind of conduit).

I do, however, think there should be an option on the battery to allow it to feed into the grid, such as if your batteries run low and you have to decide between your turrets and your food dispenser when there are no raiders in sight.

[BlueEyeNInja]

Suicide Bomber Raiders - they can go straight for turrts or soldiers

[ancusohm]

What about a smaller sentry gun?  Like, maybe a gun that only took up a single tile and took less metal to make, but had a smaller range or did less damage or something?

You might put this smaller gun inside one of your buildings as a sort of last ditch defense or something. 


Or, maybe some tech you could research to let turrets shoot frenzied animals? (if that idea hasn't been suggest)

[DeltaV]

I'm not entirely sure how feasible this is as a cheap idea, but:

What about a special event where two huge groups of raiders land on opposite sides of your colony? They would both approach from either side, and that's where it would get interesting, because the groups would fight each other as well as you. You could hide your colonists in a building, watch them duke it out and then pick off the survivors, but at the risk of significant damage to your colony because there's practically a war going on inside of it.

[Tynan]

I'm not entirely sure how feasible this is as a cheap idea, but:

What about a special event where two huge groups of raiders land on opposite sides of your colony? They would both approach from either side, and that's where it would get interesting, because the groups would fight each other as well as you. You could hide your colonists in a building, watch them duke it out and then pick off the survivors, but at the risk of significant damage to your colony because there's practically a war going on inside of it.

This is actually really cool and entirely feasible.

[Matty]

Not sure on the coding capabilities (or if it's been said)

-What about a fire hydrant or sprinkler system where if placed, fire has a 50% chance of going out. Or something to that effect.

Off topic: I'm learning Software Engineering at University, what software did you use to create this game?