Community, tell me your usability stories!

[Tynan]

It seems that if no storage squad can accept the entire stack you want to store, it won't be moved. I guess that's a bit of an AI derp.

[ShadowTani]

I personally didn't notice this issue. But I do have the issue that they keep stacking multiple stacks in the same stockpile square. So have you multi-clicked the stockpiled items to check if it isn't a 75 stack under the lower-amount stacks?

[porcupine]

It seems that if no storage squad can accept the entire stack you want to store, it won't be moved. I guess that's a bit of an AI derp.

I've got another one, kinda...

My colony is now suffering what I like to call "The sims syndrome".  It's gotten so large, and the colonists walk so slowly (relative to the passage of time), that now little, if anything can get done in a day.  Getting their two meals, and to/from bed, to a common mess hall near the entrance takes a substantial portion of the day, much like if you ever played the first sims (never played the rest), and made a luxurious mansion, your sims spent all day just in the walking.

It makes me wonder if this is something that *should* be corrected?  Perhaps a multiplier based on map size, and days passed, where all PC's/NPC's move incrementally faster to account for covering more ground?  Perhaps based on the number of colonists in play?  I don't know,  just throwing it out there.

I don't think the other tasks should be impacted, or even how this would balance out (I mean raiders/etc. should be faster too, right?), but it seems a shame that I'm about to cram everybody into a massive shared zero-space dorm by the door, and wall off the rest of my colony just to get some damn grass cut

Also, with 50+ colonists, success is their greatest enemy.  The game slows to an absolute crawl if they have many idle hands.

[ShadowTani]

^ If you have problems managing a 50+ colony then don't go over 50 colonists... There's a reason the other story tellers are capped just above 10 colonists (12?). Just because Randy Random has no hard limit doesn't mean there won't be a soft limit. Tynan already doubled the performance of the game for A2, before that the colony usually got unplayable from lag at just 30-40 colonists.

I personally don't go above 20 colonists even on Randy, and I had no issues with lag or inefficient work performance - and my colony take up more than half the map; though the actual labor and activity area is admittedly more concentrated.

[Tynan]

The problems with high population go beyond computer performance. It's also a nightmare to organize so many people. And how many stories have 50 meaningful characters? The game becomes a statistics exercise instead of a story about people when it gets that big.

[UrbanBourbon]

And earlier today I was lamenting how managing a colony becomes a bit difficult when one's colony headcount approaches 50.


It's the battles, I think. It's the lack of assigned battle stations and how you have to individually put 30+ colonists to their spots. Also, it's the targeting logic that bothers me during battles - they always fire at the nearest enemy, when I'd want them to pick their own targets, or start with the most dangerous raiders (frag raiders, molotovs, snipers, R-4s... in that order, I think). 'Dangerous', however, is a matter of opinion and situation... but not always. Frag raiders are the worst, hands down. But now, as it stands, it bothers me how they volley their fire against one raider at a time. Also the identical aiming times and firing rates bother me. They're part of the reason for those unison bursts.


And now, as my colony keeps ever growing, I find some of them are not wielding weapons. Either they were badly wounded earlier or they're new converts that I forgot to set up properly. "WHY ARE YOU NOT SHOOTING-- oh... you do not have a weapon"


Speaking of weapons, I'm swimming in them. They litter the battlefield, they litter the stockpiles. I'm out of land. This is sort of a problem even with reasonable populations but now it's just ludicrous. I get tired of blowing up excess guns. I've been converting guns to expensive stuff through wheeling and dealing  but now my room of missiles and medical kits is filling. I just want to get rid of the guns. I don't want any profit from them. I just want to destroy them or convert them to metal, perhaps. Can't I just give them away for free to weapons traders?


Even with a colony of 12, one can wish that he'd be able to select multiple colonists and manually order them to fire at the same target with just few clicks.


On the civilian side, I find myself wanting to relieve some of the 10+ skill laborers from duty so that any aspiring laborers can get a chance to develop in their favorite jobs (passion). The Overview tab doesn't show passions, though, so I'm reduced to meticulously looking through each colonist and consider new tasks for them. I'm such a middle-management dog.


Tynan, I understand you perhaps wish to restrict colony populations to figures such as 8 or 12, but some players will ultimately want to try crowded colonies, even at the risk of fading personality. I can only guess how big a portion that is. If at all possible, you should at least look into facilitating that, to make it a smooth experience rather than being one hindered by the interface, or outright refuse to do so out of artistic principles. The will of the customers is a powerful thing. It's a river, and one can take a stand in it, or even fight his way upstream, or canoe downstream with the flow. In the end, it's the people who decide how they want to play the game. But you already know this, since there's modding support. Freedom is a beautiful thing. On the other hand, so is persistence. All that being said, I don't understand why the population limit on Randy is so damn high. Were we supposed to die way before we reached a population of 30? Did you want us to fail and get annihilated, Tynan?

[Tynan]

I can only make one game at a time, and I'm choosing to make one that exemplifies the value of a small-population colony.

For players who always want more, more, and more, I'm considering putting in "sub-human" characters to swell the population. This means worker robots or perhaps ultra-animals. So you'd have a dozen humans directing a larger population of workers. This preserves the character focus on those dozen individuals.

Really properly making a game that supports larger population is, as you're hinting, a very large project and would require restructuring a lot of the design. I'm choosing not to push in that direction at this point. I suppose this could change, but this is the path I've chosen and I'm sticking with it for now.

As for Randy - it was an experiment, really. I put lots of stuff in the game without a good idea of how it'll be received. Randy has demonstrated that there is a big push for larger late-game populations. Perhaps this means I should prioritize up the sub-human characters/robot workers concept.

[Gabriel_Braun]

Craftable drone workers seems like a brilliant idea and also adds in the opportunity for massive research trees dedicated to their improvement!  I'm quite happy having 6-10 colonists if they can have an extended optronics workforce

[ShadowTani]

As for Randy - it was an experiment, really. I put lots of stuff in the game without a good idea of how it'll be received. Randy has demonstrated that there is a big push for larger late-game populations. Perhaps this means I should prioritize up the sub-human characters/robot workers concept.

I personally started playing Randy due to wanting increased difficulty and reduced predictability rather than the potential increased colony population. I still think the game is a bit too easy and would love to see a bit stricter recruitment rules, such as heavier and lasting loyalty penalties for literally kidnapping people into your colony instead of people you save or buy. ATM there's very little of interest to buy for silver anyway and I find myself selling people instead of buying.

[Serrate Bloodrage]

I chose to play Randy for the unpredictability for increased difficulty aswell

[OnyxShadow]

Time does seem to pass a bit too fast relative to what you can accomplish in it...but not as much as some players might think. I would guess that most players struggle with this issue because their base is much too spread out. If you condense things and have a layout that is intuitive you'll be a lot more productive even with current settings. However, days taking about 25% more actual time would probably have a better feel. Also, certain events with a heavy impact seem to go on a bit longer than I feel that they should (solar flares, shell shock) relative to game time.

As far as the push for more colonists, I feel like it comes from the pressure to get everything done. With 3 colonists, you struggle to simply get by. With over 10, you can easily start to expand and move on to minor concerns and lower priorities. Also, it seems to me that I need to recruit more and more folks to survive larger and larger raiding parties. Although I realize that the size of the attacks is scaled to my current personnel and defenses, its simply harder to survive an attack of 4 with 3 colonists and 1 turret than it is to survive against 20 raiders with 12 colonists and 8 turrets...particularly without losing someone irreplaceable. What I think I'm getting at is that this scaling should make drawing too much attention with more colonists and defenses a liability rather than a near necessity, and difficulty should increase as the game goes on rather than the inverse. If I'm going to die its always within the first 20 days, and then its smooth sailing.

UrbanBourbon made me think of something cool...a smelter. It doesn't even need to be efficient, but it would solve several issues.

I love the idea of creatures and robots taking care of minor tasks.

[Rokiyo]

As for Randy - it was an experiment, really. I put lots of stuff in the game without a good idea of how it'll be received. Randy has demonstrated that there is a big push for larger late-game populations. Perhaps this means I should prioritize up the sub-human characters/robot workers concept.

I suspect the push for larger late-game populations by players is driven by current game mechanics rather than what sort of game they are seeking to play. I.e. It's not that they necessarily WANT more colonists, it's that they may think they NEED more colonists to achieve whatever their goals are (be it keeping up with cleaning & hauling workloads, or being able to defend against extremely large raiding parties).

I think the biggest driver is late-game raiding parties: Turrets are relatively weak, so players really don't have much choice except to maximise their population in order to survive.

If you're wanting this game to be about small-population colonies, then I think the major endgame challenges should come more from interpersonal conflict between colonists than external threats. The Walking Dead is an example of this, where the story is more about how the survivors interact with each other than it is about killing zombies.

[Architect]

If you're wanting this game to be about small-population colonies, then I think the major endgame challenges should come more from interpersonal conflict between colonists than external threats. The Walking Dead is an example of this, where the story is more about how the survivors interact with each other than it is about killing zombies.

Couldnt have made a better point. 100% agree with this.

[porcupine]

I suspect the push for larger late-game populations by players is driven by current game mechanics rather than what sort of game they are seeking to play. I.e. It's not that they necessarily WANT more colonists, it's that they may think they NEED more colonists to achieve whatever their goals are (be it keeping up with cleaning & hauling workloads, or being able to defend against extremely large raiding parties).

I agree entirely.

I'm not desperate for that 50+ person colony, just the plays I've had so far have made it clear, I need to do that, or exploit mechanics (IE: wall my colonists in), in order to survive past X amount of time.

[Serrate Bloodrage]

My largest colony has 24 colonists and 3 turrets. They arnt walled in either. The colony is over 800 days old. Im glad I didnt read the forum and think turrets, or walling my colony in were important lol.