Your Cheapest Ideas

[Sacarathe]

Like the home zone, for fire control, the DNL zone is for "Do not leave", if a colonist enters the DNL zone, they cannot leave unless drafted(or on fire, but not to, put out a fire.

The main advantage of this is during raids, to ensure the colony can continue to function without drafting everyone. If a fire in the home zone cannot be reached due to a lack of overlap it will be ignored, as will any other tasks given to that npc.

Perhaps NPCs may leave the DNL zone for priority 1 tasks only. After which there is no reentry obligation. You could have several layers for this, and add it to the overview and tag NPCs to their layer, for example, non violent warden cannot leave cells and* food dispenser, expert grower cannot leave base (which contains hydroponics, food dispenser home) etc.


* Link must exist.

[peterpansyndrome]

Motion sensors: early warning system that detects trespassers

Did a search but couldn't find it in the suggestions although ther is a similar suggestions for an "alarm system" which touches the subject of early warning systems.

It's the first item that came to mind when I was thinking about how to defend my colony and what I would need.

[huxi]

* I always click on the door icon when I want to build a power conduit.
* I always look for the home zone tools under Area instead of Orders.
* I mix up Structure and Buildings.

I definitely have very similar problems. 

[huxi]

• A "n colonists drafted" message similar to "n colonists idle". I keep forgetting my colonists in drafted state after I arrested/rescued someone. I'd even give those messages a separate color (yellow?) since keeping the colonists in drafted state is actually quite dangerous. You'll only hear from them if they are already in trouble, i.e. "soldier needs rest" or even a "mental break" warning.
  
  The mouse-over popups of those messages should stay open so it's possible to click on one of the listed names to quickly jump to that colonist. Right now clicking on the message seems to focus on one of the contained colonists.
  
  This one is quite important and seems cheap to implement.
  
• Being able to switch turrets to an "also attack animals" mode. Those "psychic wave" events are really dangerous right now.
  
• undrafted colonists should automatically flee to the home zone if they are attacked by either animals or raiders. It's a bit unrealistic that they just keep doing their work. Not sure if this qualifies as cheap since I don't know how complex AI changes are.
• extinguishing burning colonists should automatically have a way higher priority than extinguishing buildings.

Beside that, my colonists are strangely masochistic whenever they are in idle mode. They are strolling around the map while complaining about the nasty environment at the same time - which in turn makes their loyalty drop. So to keep them happy, I need to keep them working. There should be something like a recreational area which colonists could/should visit if idling.

[huxi]

I'd like to second the request for enhanced screenshot.

It would be really nice if there was another screenshot function that creates an image of the whole map without any UI overlay at the most zoomed-in level. The image would be quite huge but also very nice bragging material. 

[todofwar]

Chance for two raiding parties to come at once, and they fight each other as well as you.

[Not-A-Spy]

I want a 'planning' object, which allows me to plan out walls and internal cave rooms without actually ordering people to mine or build yet. The 'planning' object would do absolutely nothing except appear visually on the map.
It'd be like the 'order colonist to mine here' system, except it does not actually order them to do anything. Copy and paste and change a color hexcode and remove a line or two of AI-orders code.

[Lowdekay]

It would be cool if you could group your Colonists together to crate for example a defense force without searching the whole map to find your guys!

Also how about locking doors! For example you want that your colonists can't leave the colony, without drafting them!

[todofwar]

I want a 'planning' object, which allows me to plan out walls and internal cave rooms without actually ordering people to mine or build yet. The 'planning' object would do absolutely nothing except appear visually on the map.
It'd be like the 'order colonist to mine here' system, except it does not actually order them to do anything. Copy and paste and change a color hexcode and remove a line or two of AI-orders code.

This would be great! you could design a sprawling complex/cave and be able to build it bit by bit, which makes the final product less thrown together. A little work around I have currently is to design my entire underground layer except the first few tiles, your workers can't start until your ready that way.

[ShadowDragon8685]

I'd like to second a "turrets shoot at animals" option, preferably with an option to choose which animals they gun down, so they're not shooting down harmless squirrels for no reason (or, knowing me, are doing exactly that,) don't gun down boomrats which will start a fire (unless the boomrats go hostile,) and don't gun down dangerous muffalo unless I feel like thinning the herd.

I'd also like to second "extinguish burning colonist" trumping everything except rescuing/arresting/capturing. And for the love of god, don't have it be someone on the far side of the map who gets the job; make everybody nearby pile onto the guy to put him out. (Raiders should have this behavior too.)

[CubicPowers]

Just a few suggestions:

-cancel button (example like right click)
-natural events further apart (the game hates me)
-for the future, I would like to keep the current art styles instead of it being by professionals, perhaps it could be an option? (when art is updated)
-infinite generated levels(probably a bigger project there)

Overall, I love the game, and can't get enough of it! Please continue making this awesome game!
P.S. I am a noob to programming so each one could take weeks and I wouldn't know.

[EtaBetaPi]

 -- Manual Prioritization - Prioritize nearest task:
Currently colonists apply their own priorities to tasks even when Manual Prioritization is active. This can create difficulties in certain situations, as in the following example.

Suppose I want a colonist to deal with the nearest available cleaning or repair task.
If I assign equal priorities to the two tasks, the colonist will focus on repair even if there is cleaning to be done nearby. On the other hand, if I assign cleaning a higher priority then they will focus on cleaning even if repairs are needed nearby.

It would be nice if Manual Prioritization overrode all such considerations; i.e., if colonists selected the task with the highest selected priority, ties broken only by distance. This would give players a lot more fine control over colonist behaviour.

-- Intelligent Hauling:
When a colonist has just selected a new task which is far away and Hauling is enabled for them, they should check whether there is an object which
(a) is near to them, and
(b) has a desired destination near to the task just selected.
If these conditions are met, the colonist should forget about the task and do the hauling first.

This would greatly increase efficiency in certain situations; for example, long-distance mining colonists would pick up the metal just mined when going home.

-- Combined prioritisation and designation:
When right-clicking on a tile, show the following tasks:
- Mining Rock/Mineral even if not designated (if selected, this designates the rock/mineral to be mined and then prioritizes the task).
- Hauling even if forbidden (unforbids the object and prioritizes).
- Debris hauling even if not designated (designates for hauling and prioritizes).
- Cleaning/Fire-fighting even if outside home zone.

Currently in the case where we just want to send one colonist on a specific job, we have to designate, find the colonist again and select him and then prioritize. Also this pretty much has to be done while paused, otherwise another colonist may take the job.

[murlocdummy]

Holy crap, there's a whole lot of great ideas in this thread.  What usually happens in these threads is that the idiots gravitate in here and overload the place with useless, totally impossible crap.  Fortunately, they're fairly few and far between, and most of these ideas are pretty awesome.

I won't try to suggest anything new, but I'll try and summarize a few that seem like really great ideas that need more attention.

I'd like to second a "turrets shoot at animals" option, preferably with an option to choose which animals they gun down, so they're not shooting down harmless squirrels for no reason (or, knowing me, are doing exactly that,) don't gun down boomrats which will start a fire (unless the boomrats go hostile,) and don't gun down dangerous muffalo unless I feel like thinning the herd.

I'd also like to second "extinguish burning colonist" trumping everything except rescuing/arresting/capturing. And for the love of god, don't have it be someone on the far side of the map who gets the job; make everybody nearby pile onto the guy to put him out. (Raiders should have this behavior too.)

Having multiple colonists work on the same task is pretty important.  Whenever my units put out large fires, half of the fire response team ends up walking straight into the flames, and I always have trouble finding that one colonist on the other side of the map that has suddenly called dibs on punching the flamer out.
Allowing turrets to target insane/non-insane animals is also important, since having to find a particular hostile boomrat and forming a tactical boomrat defense squadron around them is always a pain.

I want a 'planning' object, which allows me to plan out walls and internal cave rooms without actually ordering people to mine or build yet. The 'planning' object would do absolutely nothing except appear visually on the map.
It'd be like the 'order colonist to mine here' system, except it does not actually order them to do anything. Copy and paste and change a color hexcode and remove a line or two of AI-orders code.

Really, the main thing that it would do would be to occupy your time while the dwarves colonists continue to work.  It would certainly help with immersion, since you'd be literally taking the role of community planner/base commander.  It would be great for me, personally, but I don't know how the reception would be for most players.  Then again, most players default to the most "degenerate" option, anyway, so it wouldn't quite matter for them.  Ideally, it would be great to have an entire series of "planner" functions, or even colony graphs and data sheets that are based on the game's debug info.  A game that mixes a Sim City feel with tile-based tactical combat is definitely one worth putting effort into, from a consumer standpoint.

Chance for two raiding parties to come at once, and they fight each other as well as you.

There needs to be more of this.  I can't emphasize enough how much I want to see this happen.  In the event that future raiding parties include neighboring colony forces, Galactic Federation "Rimworld Outreach" teams, or even giant dragon creatures, the idea that they'd come at the same time, fight, and let you break out the popcorn while you watch them turn one another into smoking craters is something that practically anyone would enjoy, even if it causes balancing issues when they leave most of their loot behind or decide to join forces and light your metal walls on fire.

Just a few suggestions:

-cancel button (example like right click)
-natural events further apart (the game hates me)
-for the future, I would like to keep the current art styles instead of it being by professionals, perhaps it could be an option? (when art is updated)
-infinite generated levels(probably a bigger project there)

Overall, I love the game, and can't get enough of it! Please continue making this awesome game!
P.S. I am a noob to programming so each one could take weeks and I wouldn't know.

The first three are pretty simple.  I'd expect them to be simple, anyway.  Adding a "Cancel" function to right-clicks would probably take a few hours and a good amount of copypasta so that it appears in the command list of each of the game's menus, depending on how the game is written, but I wouldn't expect it'd be too much work.

For the artwork, unless there are already professionals lined up for the job of making the game look prettier, I think that most of the effort really should be put into making more items, expanding the tech tree, and implementing an armor/equipment system.  What I'd really like is a Dwarf Fortress level of equipment complexity where I could put a magical amulet or rune engraved pair of boots on a superstitious person and cause their happiness to go up significantly.

Infinitely generating levels seems like a good idea, but I think that it'd be a bit too much effort to implement, not to mention the strain on the user's computer if the coding isn't optimized properly.  Dwarf Fortress, the benchmark of all of this, uses some kind of heuristic formulas to turn the generated world into a simplified series of algorithms that accurately estimate the existence of local towns, raiding parties, trading visits, and everything else that happens in Fortress Mode without having to have the entire world run simultaneously in order to keep the game running.

Like the home zone, for fire control, the DNL zone is for "Do not leave", if a colonist enters the DNL zone, they cannot leave unless drafted(or on fire, but not to, put out a fire.

The main advantage of this is during raids, to ensure the colony can continue to function without drafting everyone. If a fire in the home zone cannot be reached due to a lack of overlap it will be ignored, as will any other tasks given to that npc.

Perhaps NPCs may leave the DNL zone for priority 1 tasks only. After which there is no reentry obligation. You could have several layers for this, and add it to the overview and tag NPCs to their layer, for example, non violent warden cannot leave cells and* food dispenser, expert grower cannot leave base (which contains hydroponics, food dispenser home) etc.


* Link must exist.

-- Manual Prioritization - Prioritize nearest task:

...

Currently in the case where we just want to send one colonist on a specific job, we have to designate, find the colonist again and select him and then prioritize. Also this pretty much has to be done while paused, otherwise another colonist may take the job.

Zoning is pretty important, since I oftentimes find miners walking over to the other side of the map, mining a single square, then walking all the way back to sleep or eat or haul something.  Having to sell off their bed so that they stay around the mining camp bed/dining area is always a pain, especially when the mining zone is depleted and they're moved back into the regular colony.  Having separate fire zones, cleaning zones, or even designating certain zones to not be repaired, like peripheral giblet cage farms to demoralize raiders would definitely help to move colonists around to where they need to be without having to resort to second-by-second micromanagement.

Alot of these ideas seem fairly cheap to implement, but I'm not sure if many of them can be implemented in the course of a few hours, much less an hour.  We really need someone to come in here every now and then to summarize the pages so that the devteam can sift through the suggestions more easily.

[starlight]

I would like to suggest a startup.txt file or (more user-friendly) an in-game menu under options that lets you control several basic but important options:

Invasions: Yes / No (Decides whether raids happen or not)
Visitors: Yes / No (Decides whether you get new drifters, etc)
Ship Drops: Yes / No (Decides whether you get ship drops)
Mental Breaks: Yes / No
Hunger: Yes / No

Most of these will NOT be used apart from by new players. But it helps new players to get into the groove by providing them a way to learn.

Just as an example, I set up my second colony and assumed that food would be easy to get (my 1st one got a lot of ship drops).
That was not the case.

[NeonSali]

I would like the ability to chose who's sleeps in which bed. Mainly because, in my head, I have a hierarchy amongst the settlers. Those at the top have bigger bedrooms than the others. I also think there should be a double bed and over time a couple might get together and have a baby!?