Legendary everything!

[Hollowendz]

tldr - Randomness after saves ruins my experience. Suggestion for random crafting table.

I still remember the day that my little crafter on day 1, built our colony a Mastercraft table for our dining room! I had no other joy activities in the place! For months that table was the high point of all my colonists day! It made the place look brighter. My colonists really enjoyed sitting down to have their meals at it. And when it came time for those little pink squares, it was the first place they bolted to every night. I had to make extra chairs quickly as all of my colonists were kinda fighting on who got dibs at night until I had a place for all of them to sit.

Ah..those were the days. I loved that table!

But now...sadly...

It's all legendary!

You see, I have the ability to save the game right before I complete building something that has a quality rating. By reloading over and over again, I am able to eventually craft every piece I build into "Legendary" quality. Seems great at first, but robs the game of it's immersion as I no longer need to accomplish things like to harvest wood, as everything is just peachy already

By making the check for quality happen much sooner than item creation, so that the item (created by the same crafter) always came out the same quality, would rob be of my attempt to circumvent the system and return some randomness to the way quality works.

I know, I could just NOT do it. But I CAN. So I DO ;P (over and over again) It's like, if it's there and I find it, it's fair game!

Had to give up playing most RPG's and many other games that allow randomness after a save, as I would use that game's randomness against it. 

The only way I can see around this that can't be easily circumvented is to have a table of all craftables, and to add a randomness to the next 100 or so builds of each item.

Of course there is still crafting skill involved, so it has to keep it's value.

In my head, It would look something like this. (beds as an example)

Normal crafting skill  no longer randomized (it's just an example;P)

Awful 1-3
Shoddy 4-6
poor 7-9
normal 10
good 11-13
Superior 14-16
Excellent 16-18
Mastercraft 19
Legendary 20

Game is created.
Game creates random crafting table.
first 5 slots of bed table says
1)+7 skill
2)-3 skill
3)0 skill
4)-2 skill
5)+10 skill



The first bed gets made by a colonist with 10 construction skill.

Construction skill would normally net you a bed of "normal quality" but since line one says +7, the colonists builds an "excellent" bed instead

The second bed was by a colonist with 20 skill. With a -3 as the secondary line, The result will also be an "excellent" bed.

A zero in the random crafting table would indicate no randomness to the build.

No matter how many times I would save and reload, the same action by the same colonist would always end up as the same result. The action itself would still have a random factor to it, but one that was predetermined. The crafter would still never build the same bed twice in a row.

Some would say, "Well people will still just wait for the table to be populated and then edit it."

And those people will. Thankfully that's too far in depth for myself and many others to go do, so will probably dissuade us from doing so. 

I wont proclaim to know anything about coding, as I have no skill. I would assume something like this may be hard to implement this far into development, and understand if I get laughed off the stage

That being said, I love this game and just want to see it turn out absolutely wonderful!

Thanks Tynan, Great work!



     

[Darth Fool]

Not to ruin your game entirely, but you do realize that once you save the game you can just go in and edit the save?  Now you not only can have legendary items but super human 20 skill masters of all trades.  The only solution is self control.

[Hollowendz]

That's where not knowing the finer details of doing such actions is a blessing in disguise. I've robbed myself of enough fun. That would just make me put down the game entirely. And that the exact opposite of what i want to do ;P

On release...1% of the player base may decide to do exactly what you've described. Yet, 99% of us will simply do what I've been doing and just reload the game. It's the easiest tool available to us, and to not have it available would be a blessing.

Self control is definitely key. I agree.

I also agree that myself and a large portion of the world population have none ;P

[Noobshock]

If you choose to play like this (constantly reloading over one items quality then another etc) you are doing more of a disservice to yourself than anything. And then telling everyone about it as if most of us didnt realize that... Yes we do, we're just maybe not as chin deep into autistic minmaxing.

"Hey guys look if I reload constantly in most games I can eventually winn4r"

...

[Noobshock]

Yet, 99% of us will simply do what I've been doing and just reload the game.

I'm afraid everyone isnt that much of a sperg.

[Limdood]

you say most of the world has no self control...its not true...self control is easily learned.

someone eats a box and a half of Oreos...gets sick...and then doesn't do it anymore!

someone cheats on their significant other, gets away with it for ages and keeps doing it...then they either eventually get caught or warp their perceptions of what being with someone actually means....consequence = learning.

someone reloads a save right before a key event over and over until they get the desired result...every time...game becomes no fun...they either learn to stop doing it or shelve the game.  Its your choice

[Hollowendz]

Sorry....everyone is a master of self control ;P

The point is...the option is now there. when I hadn't figured it out yet, I had fun. When I figured that out, I had less.

Perception is key. Given tools I know how to manipulate, I will adjust the circumstances to my liking. Not being as knowledgeable as others seems like a blessing in this instance, as i have little tools available to me, but will still instinctively use them as all normal beings would.

Knowing what I know now... I desire the game just a little less (don't get me wrong it's a great game)
I simply wanted to remove the option from other "spergs" like me, to help them avoid the same predicament.

[Fluffy (l2032)]

what about those who want a new seed on reload? Should the game cater specifically to them too?


self control. Better learn it, or you'll suffer from it your entire life.

[Limdood]

Sorry....everyone is a master of self control ;P

The point is...the option is now there. when I hadn't figured it out yet, I had fun. When I figured that out, I had less.

Perception is key. Given tools I know how to manipulate, I will adjust the circumstances to my liking. Not being as knowledgeable as others seems like a blessing in this instance, as i have little tools available to me, but will still instinctively use them as all normal beings would.

Knowing what I know now... I desire the game just a little less (don't get me wrong it's a great game)
I simply wanted to remove the option from other "spergs" like me, to help them avoid the same predicament.

but dev mode already exists....with that, you can do anything...without looking "in depth."  do you use that?  the options will exist in almost any game to abuse the hell out of the mechanics.  If its a game you're trying to "win" - those options tend to be harder to find...but for simulation games?  they're full of cheats...its about how you want to play.

[Hollowendz]

how would a new seed work on reload work? a new world each time? how does that relate?

Think of this as martial law hardcore mode...

Hardcore mode was introduce for a reason. People wanted to have the ability to have their saves removed from them. It has been introduced into lots of games for a reason. Have you finished the latest xcom min/max'ing? I did... the first time. Funny thing was, my score at the end of the game was nowhere near as good as the leaderboards... I guess I wasn't the only one min/max'ing was i?

If it wasn't for hardcore mode, I would have played it no longer than a week.

[Hollowendz]

I'm assuming that everyone on this board, excluding me, knows how to adjust mods and such. At the final release, i assume this small population will have a much wider audience and not everyone will be the programming type but will stick with what is packaged for them.

[Limdood]

im clueless on mods...if someone else hasn't done the programming work and explained how to get it started, i can't use it. 

dev mode is just a button in the options menu...

[Negocromn]

Cmon man I'm a law student and I can mess around with everything they mentioned just fine. 

On topic, I understand what you're saying, I had a quick "phase" where I would save/load everything, and I mean everything, to perfection, I would reload if a lamp was built with not enough quality lol.

I quickly realized I wasn't having fun doing that and that it wasn't me at all, as up until the latest alphas I would never choose my starting colonists and would pretty only save when quitting, so I just stopped. I still reroll some plasteel longsword crafts every now and then tho haha.

[mumblemumble]

Granted I've used saves to prevent colony annihilation,  but loading saves over and over to get a good dice roll is just stupid.

I don't think crafting needs any changes

[Hollowendz]

Granted I've used saves to prevent colony annihilation,  but loading saves over and over to get a good dice roll is just stupid.

You can call out it's stupidity all you'd like. I'm sure many people have done this and will not admit it, and are much more offended than I shall be.

Reloading to save a colony from annihilation? See i've never done this... I just usually realize I had a bad start (by my own incompetence) and start a new colony and try to do better next time. Strange how your play style and mine are so different, yet we used the same solution to both our problems.

Without realizing it, I guess i was just arguing a sort of hardcore mode in the end.

Sorry to bother all your sensibilities with my obvious stupidity... ;P