Alert Phases

[GriffenDorf]

The colonists AI is dumb as a rock when threats are apparent, when threats are detected need for sleep should be replaced by fear. And fear should override need for sleep with feelings such as "Nervous" and "Vigilant", during this time people stop farming and during this time orders for seeing over defense should be foremost in their minds.

Especially when the bloody enemy is within 5 steps of them, drafted or not.

I mean raiders do things like rape and pillage, who the hell decides to leave the defenses to other people simply because they are drafted? In games like Dwarf Fortress, if the enemy is seen, usually anyone with a weapon will jump in and fight, because holy shit that thing that came from somewhere else is killing everyone. Not go about a routine schedule, drafting is to set military stations and patrols, or removing other non military jobs, it shouldnt be about removing peoples will to fight or aid the fight.

to trigger alert phases we could build things like radars, or alarms, so if you have huge colonies or part of them get alerted, or make it automated, I dont care. Right now managing my fortress when impending doom is coming is a headache since they NEVER FOLLOW THROUGH WITH THE ORDERS I SET THEM ON, leading to death.

[Japzzi]

I see your point.. I my village was once attacked and two of my undrafted dudes ran off and started mining somewhere.. They ran right past the raiders without the raiders or colonist doing anything.

The point about Radars, automated alarms and all that is alot to ask for. We must remember that our colony isent a military base so having those technologies would be really unrealistic. But you could trade to get such things i suppose.

[GriffenDorf]

if not radars, cameras, or even basic sensors connected to electric wire that detect movement. but yeah trading for tech works too. For blueprints when it gets added.

[keylocke]

if not radars, cameras, or even basic sensors connected to electric wire that detect movement. but yeah trading for tech works too. For blueprints when it gets added.

woot blueprints! i totally agree with that one. it would add a bit of randomness to the research tree. (ie: some can be unlocked via the research hierarchy, while some rare ones can only be acquired through blueprints)

[Vas]

This is good, but maybe even a basic option for your colony could work too.  A single button you can click to set everyone on military mode, while each person will have 3 options, front lines, secondary defense, and hide.  You click this button and everyone goes to their designated zones.  If you have a front line zone, the people will attempt to get to the front lines or shoot any enemy in their way.  Same with secondary, for secondary zones.  This would be like inside your base in bottle neck locations that you set up for them.  People with pistols who aren't as effective as your front line people with grenades, incendiaries, and snipers.  The hiding people would be hiding in a well defended hole you build with several beds and a few lights and maybe even a stock pile of food so they don't go mentally insane while waiting for the battle to end.  They can still eat and sleep with a mild fear increase due to the military mode and stress would go up because of that.

Things like cameras and other technology that helps defend and alert people should be researched or gotten through trade.  Maybe you have a reverse engineering station to figure out how stuff works or you can just trade and get a new blueprint for how to build a technology.  This would be stuff like cameras to improve automated mini turret aim, sirens to alert people when raiders are near a certain area.  Like if you have multiple entrances to your very large base, you may be focused on one area and not even notice the other entrance is being penetrated with no resistance at all.

Still, a simple button to click to put everyone in military mode would be great, rather than trying to click everyone and set them, sometimes it just says varies and won't let you select R for drafting and then you have dumb people running out there to clean a speck of blood in the front lines.  Oh, maybe 4 modes by the way.  Instead of hiding, secondary and front line, a 4th option for healing/rescuing.  Nurses / doctors set aside to run out into combat and pull people in to help them or heal wounds while in combat (combat medics).  Then I could set all my useless people to rescue team so I won't lose anyone important in case they fail.

But yea, an option on each person to be able to set them to which of the 4 tasks they do when you click alert mode or military mode would be good.  I don't want to pause the game then look all over my map to make sure I find everyone and set them all to hide somewhere and hear "starving, mental break soon, mental break imminent" all fight long, then realize I forgot one important guy who was way out there in the field moving a stack of metal who gets 20v1ed because he was all alone out there when the raid began.