[A16]Verify Start (1.1.2 1/3/17) Check your colonist skills before dropping

[theubie]

Cool, thanks!

One other suggestion: An option to allow or disallow inappropriate backstories. So you could choose have colonists with any backstories or only those which are appropriate for the colonist and scenario like you would normally get.

And one more: Ability to specify traits to disallow and make it reroll or warn if you get them.

I like the idea of being able to specify what kind of team you want then hit 'go' and have it try and random a legit setup for you, or you could maybe even make it calculate one instead too. That would be cool. I have to go but I can't stop getting more ideas

Back stories and traits are a bit more complicated to deal with.  We're moving out of a simple compare INTs into a more complex here's a list, compare it to another list.  Also, it would need a much more complicated interface to deal with it's configuration. 

All of that is doable.  It's the time factor.  I'll add them to the list of potential future features.  I plan on picking away at my more immediate list today, so who knows.  I might be in a position to brainstorm how to implement those ideas soon.

[theubie]

Updated the edb Prepare Carefully version to reflect the fact that the Steam version and the Forum version of their mod are different.

[theubie]

Auto reroll? (so you can make a coffee while it finds a nice start)

You're in luck, Nommy.  I was able to actually figure out how to accomplish this.  If you (and/or anyone else) want to test the new feature, there's a release candidate on the first post that has it.  Download and try it out...but please let me know how it works and any problems with it you find. 

Been up way too long, so going to get some sleep.  Hopefully someone will be adventurous and give it a try and leave me some good feedback for when I wake up.

[Adventurer]

Hey there, been trying out the release candidate. The autoroll feature is cool, but could you possibly make it so it can reroll one character at a time rather than all three of them?

[Adventurer]

Also, I seem to have found a bug. After it finds a match, if you mess around with Randomizing colonists individually, the Check Colonists button will turn yellow, and AutoRoll won't work properly after that until you restart the game.

[theubie]

A yellow button means you have bypass on.  Which will stay on until you turn it off or restart the game.

[Adventurer]

A yellow button means you have bypass on.  Which will stay on until you turn it off or restart the game.

Bypass wasn't on though, that's the weird part.

[theubie]

I wasn't able to reproduce your result, though.  Can you make it happen consistently?  If so, let me know how so I can fix the issue.

[Adventurer]

I wasn't able to reproduce your result, though.  Can you make it happen consistently?  If so, let me know how so I can fix the issue.

I'll do my best. I'm having a hard time reproducing it as well.

But I would like to reiterate my earlier suggestion, would you be able to make a feature where you can just Auto-Roll the currently selected colonist only? 'Cause, you know, there's a lot of cases where my other two colonists are fairly ideal but my third one is a Lazy Pyromaniac Psychopath.

[theubie]

Individual rerolls is something that's on the list to look into adding.  Of all my mods, this one has the longest list of feature requests.  I'm putting the finishing touches on the next mod I'm working on, then  I'm coming back to this one for a large update.

[Adventurer]

Alrighty. As soon as I get some free time again I'm going to try and get the mod to break again. There is SOMETHING that causes the Auto Reroll to just start failing no matter what, but it's hard to pin down.

[theubie]

Thanks!  As soon as you find it, I'll get it fixed.

[Nommy]

Auto reroll? (so you can make a coffee while it finds a nice start)

You're in luck, Nommy.  I was able to actually figure out how to accomplish this.  If you (and/or anyone else) want to test the new feature, there's a release candidate on the first post that has it.  Download and try it out...but please let me know how it works and any problems with it you find. 

Been up way too long, so going to get some sleep.  Hopefully someone will be adventurous and give it a try and leave me some good feedback for when I wake up.

I just saw this, sorry. That works great man, thank you!

It was faster than I expected. IDK why I thought it would be slow. Maybe because of how long map-reroll takes. Anyway, is it possible to disable GUI updating while it's auto rerolling? That would speed it up a ton I reckon.

Also you're missing the Animals skill I noticed.

And I have some ideas how it might be improved though I think some are on your list already. Here's some more detail anyway:

What I'd like to see is some sort of summary screen when it finds a match so you can get an overview at a glance of what all your colonists are going to be capable of. Perhaps change the GUI so there is one button on the vanilla colonists page 'Varity Start...' which shows this summary page and then control and configure everything from there. So something like this:

A table with a column for each colonist and their pawn icon at the top to identify them with their name and basic details in the tooltip. Then the following rows in the table:

• Skill levels displayed like now so you can see if they match your set value but also if they are capable of performing that task and their passion for it perhaps like how it's done in the work tab in game. Perhaps also display if the skill or related work is impaired by any health conditions (red border?) like those that effect manipulation etc. and put details in the tooltip.
  
  
• Other tasks like cleaning, hauling, firefighting, combat etc which aren't associated with specific skills but which they maybe be incapable of.
  
  
• Health (pain) with the tool tip summarising the total effects and listing the conditions. I'm not sure what is most significant, maybe the pain from permanent conditions so perhaps show that and put other details in a tooltip and use some color coding like a border perhaps to show good/bad health and if it's temporary maybe?
  
  
• Speed (global work & movement). Perhaps this could also show something if any tasks are made slower or less efficient than normal because of injuries like those affecting manipulation etc. Maybe that would be better shown with the skills though, IDK.
  
  
• Age and gender e.g '47 m' or '19 f' and perhaps if they have a significant relationship (put details in tooltip?).

Then to add ability to auto-reroll only specific colonists add:

• Reroll check box so you can select which colonists are re-rolled with a click.
  
  
• Criteria config dropdown with 'Global, Custom, Configure...'? Or a button? So you have a way to set up criteria for colonists individually to fulfill specific roles.

I'm thinking the popup to configure individual colonist criteria would be the same the one for entering colony-wide criteria except with an 'override' check box beside everything. By default stuff is sort of grayed out showing the global value but when you check the box it lets you enter a different requirement which will be used only for that colonist instead. So you could configure specific roles or jobs for the different colonists by setting skill thresholds for each.

Is that the way you see this going?

I'm not sure how long you wanted to spend on it of what sort of scope or direction you had in mind but I've got some ideas on how it might be set it up to be more configurable like using a system similar to how you add rules for scenarios to configure the criteria so it's more flexible and extendable and so you can add 'And' and 'Or' conditions (shooting 5 OR melee 5), maybe having some sort of weight system so you can specify things/skills which are essential, nice/preferred, irrelevant or unacceptable etc, then let it run a set number of iterations and pick the most suitable match for your specifications. I don't know if that's something that anyone would actually use or something you'd enjoy creating but it'd be fun to play with I reckon.

Anyway, there's some feedback (a lot sorry), hope it helps, thanks and good luck!

[EDIT]
I just had another idea. If you set it up so it displayed everything in a table like the work tab does in game you could make it so you could just click on the numbers to set skill limits for colonist and you could have a column for 'colony wide limits' which you can click to set those, rather than the popup you use now. So when you click a skill box/number for a colonist it shows a popup where you can select what limit to use: 'none', 'colony wide limit' (displayed) or 'individual' limit which you set there (maybe same value as colony wide one by default). That would be better I think.

[Adventurer]

Okay, there is definitely something weird going on with Disabled skills. I have it set to a minimum of 4, and Verify Start thinks I have met that requirement. However, only one of my colonists can cook, and their skill is at 1.

Honestly, that individual roll thing I've been requesting is more than just a feature request at this point - it would really help me pin down what exactly is going on by being able to roll colonists on a single basis.

[theubie]

Get me screenshots anytime it does something odd.  It'll help me out.