Alpha 15 unstable branch testing feedback

Started by Tynan, August 17, 2016, 03:02:20 PM

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Spinkick

Do we assume everyone has radios to call other civs? Or should we have to build one to get trade that way? Could build drama and a story to have to get a radio repaired while you are under attack and call for help or someone is sick and you need meds but the radio is busted.. etc.

ReZpawner

Hooray! Found a bug!

Fertilized eggs don't stack, but are in the same location. Right now I have 165 eggs in two different spots in my stockpile. All fertilized such, frozen. http://i.imgur.com/xSq3uRH.png

applefoot

Quote from: ReZpawner on August 19, 2016, 11:01:14 PM
Would that change the gameplay at all? I don't see why the game should focus too much on the accuracies of the drug manufacturing. If you want to go into details, you need a LOT more than just the coca leafs to make coke too.

And tbh, you can use the leafs to make hashish anyway. It's from the same plant, and 'joint' doesn't specify the contents of it.

No, it would not change the gameplay at all. This would purely be a simple cosmetic change that would help immerse players. I would argue that the pretend aspect of this game is one of it's strengths, and that inaccuracies (which is different from simplification) would harm it. The difference between this and your coke example is the difference between inaccuracy and simplification.

I wouldn't consider this about the details as much as it is about the entire process of cultivating marijuana. It's incredibly strange that the harvested goods from a marijuana plant are represented as leaves. There's no denying that there are uses for the leaves, and that some growers keep it for a secondary use, but for it to represent the yield of a marijuana crop would be the equivalent to harvesting corn leaves and throwing away the cob, or chopping down a tree for the bark.

ThiIsMe007

#93
Thank you very much for the 60% reduction on friendly fire.

Is there (or will there ever be) a way to completely mod that feature out of the game ? Or at least make it so that pets don't "dance" (moving back and forth) around their owners when they start shooting, since you said (I'm glad that you did!) that you wanted animals to be of better use to players ?

The same with any wildlife or wandering traders who seem to be automagically lured to wherever my colonists are fighting, to stupidly die to a couple of bullets ? It isn't the penalties the game throws at the player (diplomacy w/ factions, aiming I imagine) that bother me, it just looks... a bit face-palm inducing knowing that most everything alive (and without a gun) tends to *flee* from gunfire.

Next, I can't say I am really excited about the drug features of a15 (I probably won't use them), but there are alot of other nice features to make up for them : the cooling room, the medecine crafting, the new aggregated armor stats in the UI, etc.

Can we expect to get the "re-balancing of the game" with the next (a16) version ?

applefoot

Quote from: ReZpawner on August 19, 2016, 11:52:21 PM
Quote from: applefoot on August 19, 2016, 11:40:19 PM
Quote from: ReZpawner on August 19, 2016, 11:01:14 PM
Would that change the gameplay at all? I don't see why the game should focus too much on the accuracies of the drug manufacturing. If you want to go into details, you need a LOT more than just the coca leafs to make coke too.

And tbh, you can use the leafs to make hashish anyway. It's from the same plant, and 'joint' doesn't specify the contents of it.

No, it would not change the gameplay at all. This would purely be a simple cosmetic change that would help immerse players. I would argue that the pretend aspect of this game is one of it's strengths, and that inaccuracies (which is different from simplification) would harm it. The difference between this and your coke example is the difference between inaccuracy and simplification.

I wouldn't consider this about the details as much as it is about the entire process of cultivating marijuana. It's incredibly strange that the harvested goods from a marijuana plant are represented as leaves. There's no denying that there are uses for the leaves, and that some growers keep it for a secondary use, but for it to represent the yield of a marijuana crop would be the equivalent to harvesting corn leaves and throwing away the cob, or chopping down a tree for the bark.

Whenever most people think of cannabis, they think of the leaf, not the buds. When I say most people, I mean "people who don't (usually) use cannabis".

I agree with you there. Marijuana is represented widely by it's leaf as a symbol. If that's the rationale for the developer's decision and it's a matter of design, then so be it.

My stance is that it hurts immersion, and spreads misconception. One thing I really love about this game is learning a little bit here and there about how things are done, however simplified the information is. It's why I take issue with inaccuracy and not simplification.

ReZpawner

Applefoot, this really isn't the time or the place for that discussion. I'm going to delete the posts I have made here, since they really don't belong under this topic, and I suggest you do the same.

Spinkick

bug in the tutorial, I had a couple guys get downed by the single raider, and then were sent to bed. The tutorial explained how you should undraft them, but since they were in bed incapacitated, I couldnt undraft them. Then the order got weird when one guy got out of bed before the others. Does that make sense?

Luieburger

Feedback item #1:
As someone who hasn't played since probably Alpha 12 or so, I find it really annoying when my colonists get picked off by hungry animals out in the wilderness. I expect colonists to either more intelligently fight back or more intelligently avoid hungry animals. Even near my base they get picked off sometimes without me really knowing it. The turrets don't seem to target hungry animals; just mad animals. Sometimes I can't get colonists out to the front door fast enough to help out. Especially in the snow. It seems like wild animals don't bother my colonists until around winter time when they get really hungry.

Perhaps have a setting where you can force colonists to travel in pairs when they go outside of home? Hunting in pairs too maybe?

Feedback #2:
People go into a daze a lot. That's fine, but I wish there was a way to help them out. Either by talking to them or bringing them back to the fire for a chat or something. If I recall correctly, you used to be able to rescue people who are in a daze. Doesn't seem like you can do this anymore without imprisoning them.

Possible bug:
When a prisoner dies of illness, my colonists get sad. If you just shoot the bastard on the ground after you incapacitate him (without capturing him), nobody cares. Is it intended that my people get sad when "innocent" prisoners die? The bastard attacked my colony and I chose to give him a second chance at life. If he dies after the fact, my colonists shouldn't care. There's nothing "innocent" about these prisoners.   If I was capturing peaceful traders or something, I could see my colonists having moral issues when they die in the dungeon, but that's a different case.

Positive feedback:
I love being able to customize my scenario. I don't know when you added that, but being able to start with almost nothing and no weapons is lots of fun. It's hard! Good feature.

ThiIsMe007

#98
Quote from: waxtats on August 20, 2016, 02:58:01 AMEven near my base they get picked off sometimes without me really knowing it.

I would like to second that, and extend it to anything reasonably visible to my colonists. I recently had a grizzly that snuck deeply into my base, bypassing turrets, and started to attack one of my tamed timber wolf pups, to feed on it I guess.

I wouldn't have been aware of it if my machine gunner hadn't opened fire on the grizzly (badly mauling the poor pup's jaw in the process) and I wasn't close to my base inspecting it.

ReZpawner

Does anyone else have any issues with kibble? My pets seem to get sick about 50% of the time they eat it.

MikeLemmer

Quote from: ReZpawner on August 20, 2016, 03:26:46 AM
Does anyone else have any issues with kibble? My pets seem to get sick about 50% of the time they eat it.

That's probably because you have an unskilled Cook making that kibble. The more Cook skill, the lower chance of a prepared meal (or kibble) causing food poisoning.

ReZpawner

Quote from: MikeLemmer on August 20, 2016, 04:48:56 AM
Quote from: ReZpawner on August 20, 2016, 03:26:46 AM
Does anyone else have any issues with kibble? My pets seem to get sick about 50% of the time they eat it.

That's probably because you have an unskilled Cook making that kibble. The more Cook skill, the lower chance of a prepared meal (or kibble) causing food poisoning.

14 cooking. It's also happening with rice. A LOT of hazardous food in my base, apparently.

Ambigore

Hey, I'm really enjoying A15, but found a bug. One of my turrets exploded and killed a few people, including one of my pawns. It also destroyed a few power cables nearby. The following red message came up immediately after. (hopefully the screenshot comes up, but if not the msg said "NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object").

added: okay my game is majorly borked. I've got 5 pawns left alive, but if you look at the colonist bar on top, there's only two showing, and the third box is blank. And I can't do anything more in the game (UI isn't coming up properly, can't issue commands etc).

[attachment deleted by admin - too old]

Ambigore

But some feedback in general. I'm a gaming veteran of 30+ years (first played Atari when I was a wee 4 year old in the early 80s). And this game, by far, is one of the BEST I've ever played in my life. I like how drug manufacturing provides an alternative revenue stream, as growing cotton and corn gets boring pretty quick.

Doc Savage NDMF

#104
Hello...

--In addition to the helpers being a bit confusing as noted so far in the thread, the placement of messages in general is confusing. The helpers say notes appear on the right, but they also appear way up at the top of the screen. Notifications should happen in one place. They also shouldn't disappear until I tell them to. I get bit by events and colonists die because I didn't catch an event.

--How is it we can fly through space and use drop pods but we can't throw an old shirt in a fire..? We have steel, is it really that hard to have a barrel and light a fire in it and burn old stuff we don't want..?

--Friendly fire is a huge improvement, but still doesn't stop pawns from running or carrying something right up the barrel of a mini gun. No common sense there at all. Unfortunately something that plagues many aspects of pawn behavior...

--The Raw Resources tab is hiding under Manufactured... Is backwards to me. Would like raw anything to be it's own category please.

--Food poisoning is happening way too often after having dedicated food services. This is one place having water in the game should matter. As it is I have to assume when the area is clean, it's clean. Everything is frozen all the time from carcass to meal, shouldn't be having food poisoning like this. It should depend on cleanliness and refrigeration, not just be an arbitrary "you're level this so people gonna be sick"...

--Build a copy would be downright stupendous if it also copied the bills... And if you could clone storage fields as well instead of just the copy paste. It is a huge time saver for furniture though...

--Be nice to have a buffer in the UI for the screen edge. Not having the screen move when checking messages and stock items would go a long way to avoiding dizzy spells and sea sickness... (personal issue)

--I think the animals are also in on the whole drug addition. Mad animals are bat fecal matter crazy. Way too @$#% many of them for my tastes. Be different if we had a column in the work schedule for "Support" that would allow me to have pawns on standby drop what they're doing and go help shoot or rescue. As it is, with this much mad (insert animal name here) disease going on I feel like I have to hunt manually all the time, which defeats the whole purpose of the priorities, which in turn takes much away from enjoying the game as a whole.

--I traded for 5 joints. I have a drug policy that my people can have 1 drug every 5 days, just to see if it works by timer and to see how the drugs are dispensed. 3 of my pawns get baked. No one knows what happened to the other 2 joints... Me thinks my pawns tried to do teh maths after they sparked. In my mind, 1 equals 1. 1 joint, 1 "dose". When I set the policy to 1, I fully expect there to be 5 colonists high, not 3.

As for the whole drug thing, I get why some would be against it or feel triggered by it etc. But as I look at it from a human standpoint, we all seek distractions in times of huge stress and their environments. I'd say crashing into a planet in a pod and having to build a new life to survive qualifies. Some turn to religion, some to superstition, others to booze and drugs. I'll never have a meth lab or be a drug kingpin, but I won't make my pawns deal with life my way. I'm not them. Having pawns with tendencies and dependencies and having to work my way around them to survive just adds another layer of complexity in the quest for a smooth running colony. I don't think that's a bad thing.

I only got this after it steam, but already it's become one of those love/hate games that can raise you to bliss and smash you to the ground in seconds; one you can't let go of no matter what it does to you. I also can't wait for the mods to catch up. I miss my storage..!

Cheers..!

EDIT:
-- On reload the breakdown for materials is good. (Bug on my end..?)

-- I had a colonist go on a smoking binge and use up half of my joints. After this I cut her off, setting her drug policy to NONE. On the fifth day after this I caught her smoking a joint as per her previous policy setting. (Bug)