Simple but high-impact "quality of life" improvements

Started by Goryus, November 08, 2016, 03:55:04 PM

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Goryus

Some of these may already be planned for Alpha 16.  And some of them are probably bugs.  But here's a list anyways.

- Add the ability to reinstall a deep drill.
- Reduce the electricity usage of Standing Lamps.
- Make being a patient override the "Work" setting in a Pawn's schedule.
- Make turrets respond to animals that attack due to hunger.
- Make infestation mobs trigger traps (IEDs / deadfalls / etc)
- Add a prosthetic nose.  (I don't think there is currently a way to resolve disfigurement stemming from loss of nose.)
- Don't automatically expand the Home Area around security objects like Sandbags and IEDs.
- Add a "build dirt floor" option using existing dirt floors
- Add "Make rough floor" option, using existing rough floors
- Add "Make very rough floor" option, to deliberately slow movement through areas
- Make the "Animal Revenge," "Raid," "Manhunter Pack," and "Infestation" events switch your time controls to "Paused" (not just normal speed).
- Remove the strike-through on fast forward that happens after all of the above events.
- Add duplicates of the "Expand / Clear Allowed Area" buttons (found in the Orders tab under Zones) to the "Restrict" and "Animals" tabs. 
- Makes Pawns automatically prioritize adjacent clumps of special ores whenever they finish mining such a chunk, provided that they are also marked with a mining order.
- When an item on the ground is selected, draw a line from it to any workbench with an active Bill for which it is a valid ingredient.
- When you right-click an item on the ground, also display the Bill options from any/all workbenches identified above.  (e.g., "Prioritize Disassembling Mechanoid" appears when you right click a Mechanoid corpse, if a valid workbench with an appropriate Bill was identified for it)
- Add the same skill restriction that exists for Art to all forms of crafting.  (Allow setting skill restrictions on Smelting, for example.)
- Add the same priority system that exists for Stockpiles to Bills, to help colonists prioritize them.  (Low / Normal / Preferred / Critical)
- Add the same priority system that exists for Stockpiles to Construction Blueprints.  (Click on the blue print to set)
- Use the existing priority system for Stockpiles to also control hauling order.  (Items for Critical stockpiles are always hauled first.)
- Make "gunshot landed here" and "explosion happened here" events trigger a Flee reaction in colonists configured to do so.  This will make them much less likely to wander through a gun fight in order to, say, harvest some crops.
- Allow crematoriums to be re-installed.
- Eject the body of a crushed pawn (due to roof collapse) out the side so they can be buried.

This game is awesome, please keep making it awesome-er.

List of simple to implement traits is here:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=27370.0

pfhorrest

Being unable to reinstall deep drills keeps them balanced in my opinion. Even with the current research, power & materials requirements they completely squelch end game need for steel & plasteel.

Standing lamps only use 75W which is reasonable, did you mean sun lamp? The higher power need for sun lamps keeps them balanced, if you adjusted them for realistic consumption of power you would also need to increase heater power requirements to ~1000W or above.

Prosthetic face features would devalue power armor, it's a good strategy at the moment to prioritize research of power armor for full face protection since the intra pawn relations penalty for disfigured is severe as is the sight penalty for damaged eyes. A few additional insults can snowball into a complete colony collapse and one damaged eye can ruin a good shooter's accuracy.

Being able to put down new dirt floors would trivialize farming further than it already is as well as lower the difficulty of several biome types.

Agree with everything else.

Quote from: Goryus on November 08, 2016, 03:55:04 PM
Some of these may already be planned for Alpha 16.  And some of them are probably bugs.  But here's a list anyways.

- Add the ability to reinstall a deep drill.
- Reduce the electricity usage of Standing Lamps.
- Make being a patient override the "Work" setting in a Pawn's schedule.
- Make turrets respond to animals that attack due to hunger.
- Make infestation mobs trigger traps (IEDs / deadfalls / etc)
- Add a prosthetic nose.  (I don't think there is currently a way to resolve disfigurement stemming from loss of nose.)
- Don't automatically expand the Home Area around security objects like Sandbags and IEDs.
- Add a "build dirt floor" option using existing dirt floors
- Add "Make rough floor" option, using existing rough floors
- Add "Make very rough floor" option, to deliberately slow movement through areas
- Make the "Animal Revenge," "Raid," "Manhunter Pack," and "Infestation" events switch your time controls to "Paused" (not just normal speed).
- Remove the strike-through on fast forward that happens after all of the above events.
- Add duplicates of the "Expand / Clear Allowed Area" buttons (found in the Orders tab under Zones) to the "Restrict" and "Animals" tabs. 
- Makes Pawns automatically prioritize adjacent clumps of special ores whenever they finish mining such a chunk, provided that they are also marked with a mining order.
- When an item on the ground is selected, draw a line from it to any workbench with an active Bill for which it is a valid ingredient.
- When you right-click an item on the ground, also display the Bill options from any/all workbenches identified above.  (e.g., "Prioritize Disassembling Mechanoid" appears when you right click a Mechanoid corpse, if a valid workbench with an appropriate Bill was identified for it)
- Add the same skill restriction that exists for Art to all forms of crafting.  (Allow setting skill restrictions on Smelting, for example.)
- Add the same priority system that exists for Stockpiles to Bills, to help colonists prioritize them.  (Low / Normal / Preferred / Critical)
- Add the same priority system that exists for Stockpiles to Construction Blueprints.  (Click on the blue print to set)
- Use the existing priority system for Stockpiles to also control hauling order.  (Items for Critical stockpiles are always hauled first.)

This game is awesome, please keep making it awesome-er.

Goryus

Balance issues with the amount of resources produced by deep drills, the value of power armor, the relative cost of sun lamps, and the difficulty/relevance of farming are different issues and not largely impacted by these changes.  These are usability problems, and for the most part there's little reason not to improve them.

Deep drills, for example, might well produce too many resources.  But the solution to that isn't to make people build them, deconstruct them into their component parts, and then build them again over and over.  The solution to that problem is better balance between the cost of a deep drilling system and its output.