Control groups, procedures, capture assignment etc.

[Namnai]

I'd initially posted this on the reddit. But I wanted to hear what other people thought about the suggestions. I wasn't sure if I should separate them into independent thread or keep them all here so I just put them all here for now.

While watching the various Let's plays I felt that the management could be organised somewhat. So far it seems that with larger raider parties the players seem to get overwhelmed and run around like headless chickens, even more so when their is a large gap between the number of colonists vs number of raiders. Here are a few suggestions to organize things a little better.

• Control groups
• Alert levels
• Capture assignment
• Target priority
• Skill Chart

1. Control groups: Units/characters could be assigned to a control group to manage builds, fight raids, take shelter. Prioritize firefighting etc
Same could go with structures such as turrets and mines. So you could bring them online for example, or set the countdown for the mines so that you can better manage raids.

2. Alert levels:
The other thing that could be a feature is a customizeable procedure for various alert levels. Like you'd do in a real situation. The red, yellow and green alert levels from Star Trek is a good analogue for explanation purposes.

For example:
At green:

• Colonists are free to do and go where they please.
• Draft statues are set to undraft
• Units go back to their prior assignments
• Turrets and defensive structures could be powered down
• Other equipment could be powered back

At yellow - for when it is unsafe outside or raiders show up, the colony could be set to yellow alert where the units do things like:

• Not travel further than the home base area/maintain a certain distance from the raiders so as to not aggro them
• Turrets groups are brought online
• Defensive structure repair and construction is prioritized
• Non essential equipment is powered down.

At red alert

• Selected units would be automatically drafted - player manages the others
• The same units could also fall into predefined defensive positions.
• Remaining important units fall back to inside structures and take cover - predefined
  

These procedures could be a predefined selected list of options the player can use (limited functionality) or player defined - Let people set up their own (like a macro) and see how players use it, could be interesting

3. Capture assignment: A lot of times players want to capture a target but end up killing them instead. With this feature you'd set a target to be captured. This way the units would use a sliding level of force weapon/melee that wouldn't be lethal to the target. Saw that the arrest feature was implemented in the game in the latest build.

4. Target priority: During a raid, targets could be selected and prioritized so that a control group would focus fire and say kill the grenadiers first.

You can highlight all your colonists and click on an enemy and they will all focus fire on that enemy until dead.

So it looks like focus fire is already ingame.

5. Skill Chart: When assigning jobs to various colonists the players would have to open up each colonists skill list to compare them. A sortable chart with all the colonist skills next to each other would allow the players to easily see who is best at for eg. social and assign the job of a warden in just a few clicks as opposed to cycling through 5 or 6 colonists and AND then assigning the job.

[Pheanox]

I'm sure its not surprising I'm responding to this.  I love organization in my games!

A DEFCON or alert system would be great for helping control the AI of your survivors through their daily activities, and a way to turn on and off power to defenses all at once would be really convenient.

Control groups are pretty great too, not much to comment on them.

For your 4 and 5 though, I'm not sure if you have noticed but in the LPs they have been fairly well taken care of. 

As for 4, you can highlight all your colonists and click on an enemy and they will all focus fire on that enemy until dead.  I've seen that in several LPs now. 

5 I guess is personal preference. I keep seeing this pop up like people don't realize that this is exactly what the overview tab is.  The overview tab shows what jobs all colonists are doing.  It shows what jobs they can and can't do, and it shows how skilled they are in each job.  It does it by brightness of boxes.  No box, no ability. Black is 0, and the whiter it gets, the more skilled.  And you can even hover over each box to see the numerical skill if that isn't enough.  I think that the overview screen is designed very elegantly and the only change I would make would be to be able to manually switch around individual colonist task priority.  Is there a reason why the Overview screen isn't good enough?

(Edited for clarity)

[Namnai]

Haha, I know you!

4. I haven't actually noticed that. Most of the LPs I've seen to date the players order them one at a time. I guess this is also taken care of then.

5. I was wondering why there were varying levels of brightness in the overview. Makes sense now. I guess the LPers I've been watching haven't realized that yet XD

Thanks for pointing these out

[SpaceEatingTrex]

I keep seeing this pop up like people don't realize that this is exactly what the overview tab is.  The overview tab shows what jobs all colonists are doing.  It shows what jobs they can and can't do, and it shows how skilled they are in each job.  It does it by brightness of boxes.  No box, no ability. Black is 0, and the whiter it gets, the more skilled.  And you can even hover over each box to see the numerical skill if that isn't enough.  I think that the overview screen is designed very elegantly and the only change I would make would be to be able to manually switch around individual colonist task priority.  Is there a reason why the Overview screen isn't good enough?

Pheanox, I've seen you point this out a couple of times now. I haven't been able to tell this was happening in the LPs I've watched. Since hovering over the box displays numeric data, do you think the numbers could just be displayed in the first place? I think that would be easier for players to understand, rather than trying to judge relative brightness.

Tynan, if you catch this thread what do you think about directly displaying the data to the player?

[Namnai]

I haven't been able to tell this was happening in the LPs I've watched. Since hovering over the box displays numeric data, do you think the numbers could just be displayed in the first place? I think that would be easier for players to understand, rather than trying to judge relative brightness.

I am actually torn between the current state which as we can see isnt very intuitive but I agree with pheonox that it is rather elegant. Although as you point out, it would be difficult to discriminate the brightness of the box between skill level say 5 and 6 or maybe even 7.

[Zeiph]

Maybe go with a number in the box and the box being white (job active), geyed (job inactive) or stroke (job unavailable because you haven't got the required skill, or you are a noble )

[Spike]

Pheanox, I've seen you point this out a couple of times now. I haven't been able to tell this was happening in the LPs I've watched. Since hovering over the box displays numeric data, do you think the numbers could just be displayed in the first place? I think that would be easier for players to understand, rather than trying to judge relative brightness.

Tynan, if you catch this thread what do you think about directly displaying the data to the player?

I don't know if that's really needed.  As you said, and as I've said as well, that's part of the problem of watching someone else play the game.  When you play it, you can hover over everything and figure it out - when someone else is playing, if they don't mention it or if it's not blatantly obvious, you'll probably miss it.

[Pheanox]

I don't know if that's really needed.  As you said, and as I've said as well, that's part of the problem of watching someone else play the game.  When you play it, you can hover over everything and figure it out - when someone else is playing, if they don't mention it or if it's not blatantly obvious, you'll probably miss it.

This is basically my point, yes.  If you are watching, it doesn't show you what the numbers are.  If you are in game, you won't need it to constantly show you numbers.  I don't see why tynan couldn't put numbers in there, I just don't know if he should.

I am actually torn between the current state which as we can see isnt very intuitive but I agree with pheonox that it is rather elegant. Although as you point out, it would be difficult to discriminate the brightness of the box between skill level say 5 and 6 or maybe even 7.

This is why I mentioned personal preference.  Honestly I think this is highly intuitive.  I could grasp what it meant the moment I saw the Overview tab.  Perhaps a more refined grayscale could be used to make it more clear, though?

Miah posted screenshots detailing the overview tab over here.  Give it a look.

[British]

The overview is taking suggestions here, so please focus that specific discussion there.

About the alert levels, while there's some merit to it, what bothers me is that it would bring yet other things to be automatized...
The more you automatize, the less you directly control.
The way I understand it, when there's no threat around, you tell your colonist to do specific actions now and then (mine, build...), and the rest of the time, they manage their actions on their own according to their settings.
Then there's combat, and that's when you are in full control, and not just administering from afar.
I think that's an important thing to keep, else the game will just be a hive-managing game, where you look at it from time to time, and possibly give some orders, and that's it.

[mojo-jojo]

Came here for control groups!
What is the current option to find a colonist? click the work tab, click the dudes name. What it could be, ctrl + 1 to assign a 'single unit' control group, then just press 1 to select the dude, tap 1 twice to center screen.

[BetaSpectre]

+1
But I wouldn't do this if there was an option to pause during a raid. I'd just hotkey the list of fighters, or draft everyone to place behind cover to sort things out.