Alpha 16 unstable branch feedback

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

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Tynan

As announced here: https://ludeon.com/blog/2016/12/alpha-16-on-public-unstable-branch/

Please do not report bugs here. If you find a bug, please report it in the Bugs forum!

In this thread, I'd love to get:

  • Play stories
  • Balance thoughts
  • Clarity and interface feedback
  • Other design feedback

(This thread is for meaningful, useful feedback, to help us design the game. Low-effort or off-topic posts, including random suggestions unrelated to A16 updates, will be removed.)

Thanks greatly!
Tynan Sylvester - @TynanSylvester - Tynan's Blog

carbon

The warning that pops up about generating a 100% complete globe taking a "very long time" seems a bit overkill. It only took me ~50 seconds to load (did it twice consistently) and I'm on a non-gaming laptop that's a few years old. A "very long time" in a dwarf fortress world generation context would probably be minutes or hours.

Probably should include a "cancel generation" button on the loading screen for cases where it does run long for some reason. Hitting 'Esc' didn't appear to do anything.

carbon

The the initial selection of a base location highlighter could probably be made more visually apparent. It's nearly, if not fully, invisible while zoomed out.

Either that or allow the user to center the screen on the currently selected location, because it is very easy to lose track of it. The Lat. v Long. doesn't help without corresponding map lines.

carbon

#3
In previous alphas, even if your last pawn died, there was always a way to come back to life by simply waiting until a wanderer joins.

In the new version, I abandoned all colonies while a caravan was away and then the caravan pawns died. This left me in complete limbo where I could not resurrect or interact with the world in any apparent way.

If all pawns (and animals) die with no colonies active, it would be nice to have the option to resettle an abandoned colony and wait for a wanderer there (assuming the post-death wanderer is still a thing).

EDIT: To go along with this, when you are in this post-death limbo state, the game should halt autosaving (or limit it to only one slot). Otherwise, the game can very quickly overwrite all meaningful autosaves as the passage of time moves very fast, but doesn't correlate with anything meaningful happening.

UnlimitedHugs

#4
Congrats on the ambitious update!

Loving the new research screen, but as a modder it raises a few concerns, unless I'm missing something.
Coordinating between dozens of different mod authors, as to where their research projects should exist on the chart, will quickly become a problem. The game does try to find some open space for overlapping items, but with enough mods it is bound to turn into a mess.

I can see two potential solutions:

1) Add tabs to the research window.
One tab for each mod that adds new research projects. Each tab will contain a clean sheet for research placement. The problem are prerequisite researches from other tabs, with the potential solution being that the mod author explicitly places references to those researches in his tab.

2) Keep all projects in the same view, but divide the sheet in section rows. Each mod with research projects will have their own row, and their researchView coordinates will be relative to their own section. The height of the sections would automatically accommodate all items contained within, or be specified in the defs. For more clarity the sections could be titled with the mod name and could have up/down arrows to reorder the sections on the sheet.
Scrolling would need to be addressed, as well- dragging to pan the view could be a good option.
HugsLib - AllowTool - Remote Tech - Map Reroll - Defensive Positions: Github, Steam

Alenerel

#5
Could you check the cheapest suggestions? Some are really cheap and useful. For example, able to sort the work tab or the animal tab by name, and there are a lot of balance issues there too.

About the alpha itself, do you know when will be the full release? I mean, about a week, about two weeks?

BTW you said that not all the content is included? What can be missing being the final stage before being released?

Zhentar

Quote from: Alenerel on December 12, 2016, 05:42:21 PM
BTW you said that not all the content is included? What can be missing being the final stage before being released?

Not content, "player content". Which would be Name in game/Backstory in game characters.

bclewis

Quote from: UnlimitedHugs on December 12, 2016, 05:39:44 PMLoving the new research screen, but as a modder it raises a few concerns, unless I'm missing something.
Coordinating between dozens of different mod authors, as to where their research projects should exist on the chart, will quickly become a problem. The game does try to find some open space for overlapping items, but with enough mods it is bound to turn into a mess.

Depends how it's implemented.  The research tree was already a "tree" before the update, it just didn't display as such.  If the new UI positioning is hardcoded it might be a problem, but if it's a generic tree layout algorithm I don't see why it should be an issue any more than it is in A15.

zidey

When i attack an outpost and have killed all the people, please stop making indoors un pathable, right now i have to draft, move them onto a door then click inside.

Jaxxa

Quote from: Grishnerf on December 12, 2016, 08:19:57 PM
fire sustainer was null

This is a Bug, please Read the first post and put this in the Bug Report Forum.

Reve

Unfortunately, I had only few hours to test this new release, but what I noticed is that you cant just randomly enter to whatever tile. You have to eighter "settle" it, or attack a colony. Why not let player enter every tile? It could help, for example surviving biomes like desert or ice sheet, because you cant search for animals to hunt there (By the way, it works now too, you just have to settle next to the enemy colony, attack it, and instead of shooting pawns, shoot wild animals and just leave - what I noticed is that enemy is always passive when you begin an assault, so no risk and free food :) ).
English is not my native language, so.. feel free to correct me :P

carbon

#11
To push the limits of the current system, I tried attacking an outlander outpost in the very polar regions of an ice planet. Some things need some work.

1) Outpost was heated by only a few fires with no backup wood supply. Fires go out and the entire outpost begins to freeze starting the third day. You might disable outposts in areas where the temperature falls outside acceptable limits or at least provide more permanent heating and cooling infrastructure for those that need it.

2) There's really nothing to prevent me from setting up a mini-colony in the outlander's backyard (I really started to). I can carry in some components and there's always plenty of steel around to mine. I would suggest disabling all building options except walls, sandbags, mortars and sleeping spots while attacking.

3) The outlanders finally came out of their little center area to attack me on the third day (after they began to freeze to death). I can't tell if this was done on a timer, because they were taking losses or because I had built up a small barracks (with indoor heating!). If there's a specific counter attack mechanic, it should be clearly indicated somewhere. They came upon me rather stealthily.

4) The outlanders completely gave up after I downed only two of their people (plus one I psych lanced another via local ancient danger room drop, plus 2 dead by hypothermia, plus one they friendly fired). Given I came in with only the starting three and they had 15 to 20 to begin with, I expected more resistance. I'm not looking forward to underwhelming victories in the late game when I have actual gear and troops.

5) There's no current warning if you send a pawn(s) caravaning that has clothing poorly suited to the climate. Given heat/cold can kill in these contexts while days away from the nearest shelter, an "Are you sure?" would be appropriate.

Thundercraft

Quote from: carbon on December 12, 2016, 09:07:09 PM2) There's really nothing to prevent me from setting up a mini-colony in the outlander's backyard (I really started to). I can carry in some components and there's always plenty of steel around to mine. I would suggest disabling all building options except walls, sandbags, mortars and sleeping spots while attacking.

Is being able to build in an enemy's back yard a bad thing? I'd sooner call that a strategy than an exploit. Isn't there historical precedence for an enemy to build a new fort near an enemy's position?

CodeRen

So I attacked 2 bases and completely destroyed the enemy even though I had about 5 people. They had like 10 people? Anyway I can kill them one by one and they they dont all come out until most of them are already dead. Im not sure if they should know im here automatically when I spawn in, but currently they are way to easy to gank. Imagine if I had a few snipers?

Why cant we enter individual zones rather than just settling it? I thought in this update I would run out of resources in my cell and then just go to the next doors one and take from there without settling in it. Still a great update tho!

Also picking up the items is a nightmare. I have to claim the doors and then click the items to be picked up one by one. I dont think the menu where you can reform the caravan and select what items you want from the destroyed outpost is working as intended.

Really excited about this and a cool story that happened was that for some reason when one of my pawns got downed and I had them pick her up and take her away from here, she made her own caravan and then an AI caravan showed up and I accidentally attacked them and its just my one pawn with her dying friend in a small map because it was mostly mountains. I had her find some nearby ruins and wall herself in there. Imagine in a month the stories that will be generated? Great work!

MikeLemmer

I was on Day 6 of a "Some Challenge" Cassandra game when I got a distress signal event. I accepted the caller and waited for the raid. There were only 2 pirates (expected), except one of them had a Good Machine Pistol... and was a decent shot with it. (Uhoh.)

Has the difficulty of early pirate raids been increased? Or did I just get unlucky? (Also, I'd suggest upping the first difficulty leap from 5 colonists to 6 colonists; it feels like the 5th colonist is usually a Distress Signal event, which means you get a moderate difficulty raid while you've only had time to arm 4 colonists.)