Outposts and Trucking

Started by spheresus, June 15, 2016, 07:56:32 AM

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spheresus

I'm thinking that Trucks and bikes can be told to go back to a designated garage spot when their cargo hold is filled. So you attach colonist(s) to a truck and order the truck where to go. The truck won't move until all colonists you attached to the truck are inside. Once the truck arrives to the spot you designated the colonist come out and do what their assigned when their done or when the truck cargo is full the colonists go back inside the truck and the truck automatically drives it's self back to it's designated garage point and the colonists inside the truck automatically come out and unload the truck cargo onto the garage point. This repeats itself until the work site is done.

Essentially the truck is a temporary mobile HQ which you assign colonists to. The truck will have a work site where the truck will automatically stop on. The work site is similar to the area function we already have in the game. The work site will be borders where the colonists attached to the truck will be limited on where they can go. You can click on the Truck to head back to it's garage or have it done automatically when cargo is full or during the time of day.

A cool idea is you can load a truck up with materials so when you are mining or farming a far away spot on the sector map you can build like a work camp. You can have multiple garages and trucks programmed to pick up cargo from one garage and drive it to a different garage. So you have a mining outpost or farming camp where once it's garage hold is nearly filled a assigned truck is called in to pick up and drop off.

To really make this shine is to have really large maps with highly valuable spots for mining and farming or even harvesting spread over the terrain. This will make outposts and trucks valuable assets to have. Trucking can be a new profession. Raiders can target your outpost and you can have your warrior colonist gear up and hop on some trucks from your main HQ and ride out to defend your outposts. I can see lot's of great potential here.

This may require an end game kind of scale where perhaps your building a super project like the spaceship or some other kind of installation like a super weapon or some mega structure that will benefit your colony someway. These projects require loads of materials. I'm aware this requires big changes in the current game which is why it's best left for as a mod. Unfortunately I have zero modding skills maybe some one else can pick up on this idea.