Fast Forward On Colony Death

[Elixiar]

"A colonist has died from infection."

And thats it.
The last member of your colony has succumbed alone and in pain to infection.
Dead friends lie vacant in nearby hospital beds and the colonies crop fields will continue to burn long into the night.

Sure, you have the option to keep watching the map, hope something interesting happens but you may be waiting a loooooong time. Why not capitalise on this option?

On colony death or evacuation, when the option to keep playing is selected, there comes an option to fast forward.

Choosing this at any point after colony death will time jump the map 10 years.

Large parts of the colony will be damaged, electronic devices nearly completely broken, and vegetation will have reclaimed what belongs to nature. (Temperate biomes etc).

After jumping 10 years, an event pops up (A group of wandering space refugees/ tribals/ pirates/ wanderers) have happened upon this old colony and decided to settle.

Thus, you are playing in the remains of your old colony. And the time lapse should make it feel like a new game. Except for mined rock of course.

[Kain21]

Great idea! Playing in the husk of your old colony would be interesting. Maybe it should come with some new dangers such as traps or a hive infestation.

[14m1337]

i kinda like this idea. like a second chance for a unlucky decision you made, without having to rebuild everything starting at zero.

[DirectorBright]

I like it.

[haywire-2014]

+1 this !!!!!!!

[schizmo]

Actually if you press "keep playing" on your colony after the game ends, eventually you will get the random event for "a wanderer joins" and you will be able to continue from there.

And since colonist joining events are more likely to occur the lower your population, you really shouldn't have to wait more than a few in game days

[ArguedPiano]

Actually if you press "keep playing" on your colony after the game ends, eventually you will get the random event for "a wanderer joins" and you will be able to continue from there.

And since colonist joining events are more likely to occur the lower your population, you really shouldn't have to wait more than a few in game days

Although this is true I think the idea was that rather than pick up exactly as the colony had ended (or a day or two later), is you would come back to find most walls and rooms destroyed, lots of vegetation everywhere, probably very little goods left due to scavengers.

Mostly you would find ruins with a slight resemblance to what your previous base used to be.

Definitely an interesting idea!

[schizmo]

I just don't really see the point honestly, if new colonists find the worn down ruins of your old base they're just going to sweep and repair everything and within a few minutes you'll just be picking up where you left off but with new untrained pawns. It's effectively the same as leaving the base intact because very little will change, and it functions as a player handicap, "easy mode" if you will.

Further, the enemy raids are based on colony wealth, so most likely the 2 or 3 colonists that stumble onto the base will just get overwhelmed by another raid they're not equipped or trained to handle, and the game would end rather quickly and the cycle would repeat.

Not to mention a successful colony will have likely tapped out many/most/all of the resources on the map, meaning this theoretical idea only works if a colony has failed, because otherwise the colony has no room to expand and no resources with which to build the ship.

It's a neat idea but it's got some really severe flaws

[Elixiar]

Where you see flaws Schizmo I see potential!

About the colony wealth, there's an easy fix for that.
"Claim"
Though bear in mind as another commenter stated, most things outside of stone structures would be gone, maybe a very damaged freezer or a few beds here and there but it would very much be playing "in the shell" of what you once had.
Any stockpile you once had would all be gone, and a mined out map would mean you can't recover in the usual way. Most likely you would have to rely on loot, selling crops etc in order to regain supply of steel.

You could repair what remained but like I said, there wouldn't be much *too* repair.
Finally in the event the colony was a big one before its downfall, then the map would feel more like a city ruin.

It's not meant as a 'start new game'
More as a. Man that was a really cool colony/ map. Would be cool to do a 2.0.
Again, it wouldn't be an easy mode as the map would already be lacking in minerals.

All optional of course. On game end there's nothing to stop you quitting.

[Dive]

I like this idea, except the part of completely skipping the 10 years. I would rather have an ability to view the colony in a super fast-forward mode, watching the ruins decay slowly. It's interesting to see how the structure falls apart due to natures forces. I've done this a couple of times with the current mechanics and it was cool, but it took a lot of time at the current maximum available fast-forward speed.

[Elixiar]

I like this idea, except the part of completely skipping the 10 years. I would rather have an ability to view the colony in a super fast-forward mode, watching the ruins decay slowly. It's interesting to see how the structure falls apart due to natures forces. I've done this a couple of times with the current mechanics and it was cool, but it took a lot of time at the current maximum available fast-forward speed.

I'd love that aswell, I'm just not sure the game would be capable of such a hyper fast forward since it would be updating itself and pawn pathing and stuff as such an incredible rate.

[Guluere]

Where you see flaws Schizmo I see potential!

About the colony wealth, there's an easy fix for that.
"Claim"
Though bear in mind as another commenter stated, most things outside of stone structures would be gone, maybe a very damaged freezer or a few beds here and there but it would very much be playing "in the shell" of what you once had.
Any stockpile you once had would all be gone, and a mined out map would mean you can't recover in the usual way. Most likely you would have to rely on loot, selling crops etc in order to regain supply of steel.

Maybe ships from space have crashed into the mountains and formed into steel.

[Harold3456]

Actually if you press "keep playing" on your colony after the game ends, eventually you will get the random event for "a wanderer joins" and you will be able to continue from there.

And since colonist joining events are more likely to occur the lower your population, you really shouldn't have to wait more than a few in game days

This is true, but that's still a few days of watching an empty screen on super fast forward. I've totally had the same thoughts as the OP when my colony has broken down. You can't even get up and leave the computer, because sometimes events come up which slow down time again (or full-on pause the map).

Besides, it'd be haunting to revisit your old base and have to get everything up and running again. Maybe have the doors busted open and have it full of animals (and animal corpses). Or a "zzzzzt" burned up half of it. My only question is: is it possible for the game to jump forward 10 years organically, by simulating every event that would have happened in an instant? Or would it just be random damages?

[asanbr]

It would not be instant, but it would be very fast if you let the screen go dark, skipping graphics, sounds, etc.

[FridayBiology]

+1 please all bow your heads and pray that the great shining lord Tynan Sylvester, Armok possibly be his name and pray. pray for another chance, a chance to once again watch colonists starve and suffer from nanobot illnesses. a chance to build a colony in a location devoid of resources and hope. a chance to consume that meat which came from a dubious sources. oh great Tynan please make this a thing...

(need to go to work though, will need to come up with an actual pray thing later on)