Alpha 16 unstable branch feedback

Started by Tynan, December 12, 2016, 01:49:06 PM

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Connwaaer

One thing that really bugs me is, that when in a caravan and you get ambushed your colonists don't automatically take food out of pack animals (like muffalo) when they need it. yes I make sure to undraft them but post fight when I'm trying to heal up battle wounds is where the problem lies.

Zhentar

Quote from: PocketsOSunshine on December 13, 2016, 02:03:07 AM
Also, when you are sending out a caravan, your people don't take care of themselves. I was going to send out a small caravan with two people and they wouldn't eat or sleep while packing. I can force them to eat and then they go back to packing up the muffalo (which is good!). However, they won't sleep and I can't force them to sleep so they (along with the muffalo) pass out from exhaustion. The muffalo cannot be force fed.

I have not actually gone through with a caravan outing, after a few tries (and my people practically killing themselves), I just decided to reload an earlier save before I told them to go out. I'm sure they would have left after packing, but I didn't really give them the chance since they kept practically dying.

How is it taking you that long to load up a small caravan?

Tynan

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

We're working on some of the more important bugfixes and then may be able to look at the subtler design improvements under discussion here.
Tynan Sylvester - @TynanSylvester - Tynan's Blog

RayvenQ

Having got a notification that needed me to check out the world map, I discovered that perhaps we need a "Zoom to own colony" button as I seem unable to find my own colony on the map now in order to send out a caravan

Tynan

Quote from: RayvenQ on December 13, 2016, 10:10:22 AM
Having got a notification that needed me to check out the world map, I discovered that perhaps we need a "Zoom to own colony" button as I seem unable to find my own colony on the map now in order to send out a caravan

This has come up a few times, so I think we're going to add it.
Tynan Sylvester - @TynanSylvester - Tynan's Blog

RayvenQ

Awesome, or if not a zoom to function, a "hide all except my colony" tick mark, that way its easier to spot your colonies if you have multiple. I did however like the event that caused me to get lost in the world screen, you probably know which one.

Thanks for all the little quality of life changes you've made, the time until bleed to death is very helpful.

terheyden


  • I love the added descriptions and info messages, like, "[Item] is degrading due to not being under a roof," and "Will bleed to death in X."
  • The World screen is so incredibly cool. It's a real shame that it's difficult to render 100% of it, because when it pops up and 70% - 50% of it is blank ... it dampens the experience. I would either make players wait for the whole world to render, have the world render dynamically as the user is looking at it, or generate less up front so the user can really experience that earth-discovery-site-selection experience. This is really going to be a "wow" moment for the first-time player, I feel strongly that you should nail this. I also noticed the streamlined site selection and exploration process, and I think it's good - you merged some of the DF-ish inspections like the heat map, etc., and it totally works.
  • I'm really concerned about the construction and repairing skills being merged together in the Work pane. If anything, I would go in the other direction - the work skills desperately need finer tuning (i.e. break down into MORE buttons). For example, building roofs - because it's the last thing the building colonist decides to do, you have to build exactly one building at a time, and wait for them to build the roof, before assigning *any other* construction task. It SUCKS. Now I fear we'll have to do the same thing for repair - e.g., if there's a raid, I'll have to cancel all my pending work so builders focus solely on repairs first. Whereas before I just set repairs to 2 and construct to 3. (And I would really, really love to be able to set roofs to 2.) I know right now you have the "simple mode" with the green checkmarks and "advanced mode" with the numbers 1-4; perhaps there could be a 3rd mode. Or change the right-click to show an advanced menu instead of incrementing the number value?
  • Was there always a "kind" colonist attribute? I saw that pop up and thought it was a nice touch.

That's all for now, sorry I haven't gotten to make a caravan yet; I'll post more as I get to it.

carbon

Quote from: terheyden on December 13, 2016, 12:13:56 PM
...Was there always a "kind" colonist attribute? I saw that pop up and thought it was a nice touch....
Kind is definitely new.
The Cold / Heat lover traits also seem to be gone (or exceptionally rare).

Mihsan

#38
Balance/story: I was traveling and found in one place 3 ruined building made from plasteel. For my just started tribe it was real treasure (210 plasteel)... and it feels a bit too much (plasteel buildings too common?) to be right. Or maybe I was just lucky.

Design: Constant "beeps" and messages about dead plants are kind of annoying. Not sure if they are more good than bad (or vice versa). Add option to turn them off maybe?

Pain, agony and mechanoids.

jkolman

Can confirm. In the three initial locations I've settled, I've had several (1-3) walls each having ~75 plasteel in each wall formation. I never got those in A15, so it seems to be a conscious decision/artifact of a change in the procedural generation. I think it's a bit too much. Maybe if there is that much plasteel, have a lower chance of occurrence?

Grishnerf

Quote from: terheyden on December 13, 2016, 12:13:56 PM


  • The World screen is so incredibly cool. It's a real shame that it's difficult to render 100% of it, because when it pops up and 70% - 50% of it is blank ... it dampens the experience.



at planet creation you can set the render % up to 100.
Born in Toxic Fallout
Drop-Pod Escape Artist

jkolman

Play story: I haven't logged too much time in A16 yet and I played a good deal of A15 with the hospitality mod on (among others), so my experience might be biased. That being said, in the few colonies I've started in A16, visitors are always running around right next to my sleeping colonists. This creates high values of disturbed sleep really quickly.
Even when I have a barracks made for colonists, visitors and their animals cycle through the room multiple times per night before leaving. I'm not sure what the mechanic was in vanilla A15, but it'd be nice to designate a separate spot for them to gather.

Zhentar

Modding request: WorldComponents. A good number of mods used MapComponents for global state, in part because they conveniently get serialized to save files. It doesn't look like there is an equivalent in A16, which will make updating those mods harder.

I know you can't spend that much time on it, but a simple copy of MapComponents would likely help modders out quite a bit. It would also let us do more with the world map without running into serious compatibility issues.

Fluffy (l2032)

I sincerely second Zhentar's request. I use MapComponents as controller objects, which also need to save their state. While I could replace their functionality by using Unity's GameObjects with MonoBehaviours, I'm not really sure where I should now store their information. Attaching it to a particular map seems risky, given that players can conceivably create (and abandon?) multiple colonies in a single game (unrecommended option, but still).

A MapComponent that is attached to the world instead of a specific map would perfectly replace the old functionality, and be a lot more accessible to mod as well!

Tynan

Thanks for the notes.

I'll look into the plasteel shrine thing. It does sound OP.

It's a bit late but I'll try to get some sort of global "GameComponent" in that can serve some of the old roles of MapComponents. Might be A16, might be A17.
Tynan Sylvester - @TynanSylvester - Tynan's Blog