"Repair" Needed or not?

[Listy]

I fired up A16 at last and repair has been rolled into Construction. That seems like an issue to me. I used to have everyone on Pr1 repair just so after a deadly attack they got to work and fixed things quickly. It allowed my colony to actually play at a decent rate, with dedicated constructors constructing, but if there was a mass of walls and sandbags that needed fixing it got done quickly enough.

I remember last time Tynan asked if he should do that, I seem to recall the majority said keep them separate, and it was. To my mind its like merging "Plant cut" and "Grow2 into one, after all they're both plant related, or "smithing" and "crafting", after all they use the same skill and are kinda related.

But am I being a big jessie and over reacting or should they be split?

[Dingo]

I re-added Repair in my A16 release of Refactored Work Priorities. I think it's bad design to take that choice away from users. I get why he did it, kind of. The pawns you assign to repair as a high priority are usually pawns with good Construction.

Having said that, Repair is a task that anyone can do. There is no penalty other than time-to-complete for less skilled pawns. Some players want to prioritise it less or more than construction.

[Elixiar]

In my opinion the lack of control of features is never really a good thing,

I'd like repairing back separately since I consider repairing and construction to be seperate actions with different reasons. I don't normally have constructors and repair and the same pawn anyway towards late game.

[Calahan]

I haven't had time to play A16 for more than a hour, but I must admit that this change, along with merging the room info and beauty stats overlays, are two changes I think I'm going to have a very hard time adjusting to. Especially the loss of a separate repair job.

I hate to say it but not having a separate repair job might make the vanilla game unbearable for me. And no that's not an exaggeration. As I usually don't have any Pawns assigned to repair, and I only assign some when required, such as after a raid. Since I don't really care if one of my outer, and distant, perimeter walls has an integrity of only 99%. But if my builders are now going to be running around repairing all those 1%'s I don't care about, instead of doing the construction jobs that I do care about, then my OCD is likely to go into meltdown. I know I can get around this by adjusting the Home area, but then I won't get alerts if a fire breaks out on those tiles. Which makes it far from an ideal workaround. I've never used a RimWorld mod before, but if someone makes one that just puts the repair job back, then I'm pretty certain I'll be breaking my RimWorld mod cherry.

So overall, two very confusing changes for me. I had heard about both of these mergers during A16 testing (but didn't play the test builds myself to know first-hand), and I'd assumed both were done to facilitate the addition of an extra work job/overlay respectively. But it seems my assumption was wrong, and the reasons for it aren't so clear. I'd certainly be interested in hearing Tynan's reasoning behind these decisions, because I'm really struggling to see how they improve the playing experience. Since both only worsen it IMO (with the repair/construction merger being quite detrimental to it).

Edit

In my opinion the lack of control of features is never really a good thing.

That's a nice way of summarising it, and I certainly agree.

OTTOMH, I can't think of any game I've ever played that was improved by removing or reducing the player's control over jobs/tasks etc. (but that's probably just me).

[Listy]

I've never used a RimWorld mod before, but if someone makes one that just puts the repair job back, then I'm pretty certain I'll be breaking my RimWorld mod cherry.

I've been here since A6, and never modded the game (apart from one brief fiddle with prepare carefully). But it is looking like a strong contender for the thing that forces me too.

[Calahan]

But it is looking like a strong contender for the thing that forces me too.

[Activate stalking protocol Delta14] Target: Posting history of user:Listy. Reason: So as to not overlook any "Add separate repair job" mod thread this user creates.

[Listy]

But it is looking like a strong contender for the thing that forces me too.

[Activate stalking protocol Delta14] Target: Posting history of user:Listy. Reason: So as to not overlook any "Add separate repair job" mod thread this user creates.

Don't look at me. I tend to just do drive by postings while yelling out of the window.

[RayvenQ]

The mod that will probably do what you want Calahan, will be Fluffy's work tab, since that not only adds better easeability of use to the work tab, but also, it also has a mode that has each individual job type, with their own priority box.  Which is actually kinda awesome and I'm not a person who likes to super micro everything but it can be very useful.

But yes +1 to repair needing to be a seperate priority.

[BlackSmokeDMax]

Agree with Callahan on both points, room display/beauty combo and the repair thing. Both seem like a step backwards, hope Tynan changes his mind.

[brianterrel]

I'm loving A16, but the merging of repair and construction is just awful. I usually have my best builder with construction priority 1, and a bunch of folks who otherwise aren't so useful with high repair priority. Now I can't set that up.

I've just had a run of 6 raids back to back (Thanks Randy!). I'm in a forest and the local pirates are all incendiaries all the time (first raid was on day 2, he had an incendiary launcher. wat?). The raid sequence started as I was transitioning my base to stone from wood, so most of my base has been on fire at some point recently. I'm trying to rebuild walls for my bedrooms, and my builder will only do one tile of wall before rushing off to fix the damned paint on a bunch of walls that had a fire inside (yay incendiary mortar siege!). It's just tedious to micro manage, especially since I had a flow that worked perfectly in A15.

This is the first time i've really been looking into getting mods to fix something.

[Dukkha]

I don't mind them being together but not being able to prioritise building over repairing is driving me crazy. I don't care about the bullet hole my hunter shot in my stonecutting hut I need to get power back online before all my plants die!

[Calahan]

The mod that will probably do what you want Calahan, will be Fluffy's work tab, since that not only adds better easeability of use to the work tab, but also, it also has a mode that has each individual job type, with their own priority box.

Yes, Fluffy's work tab mod is certainly a mod I'd likely be interested in, but probably only after the game leaves development. Which is why right now I'd only be looking for a mod that just did the one thing only. Making the repair job separate again.

...but not being able to prioritise building over repairing is driving me crazy.

Still haven't had chance to play the game yet, but this is what I fear will drive me crazy as well. As I know me, and I know having arse-backwards (IMO) priorities that I can't control or easily workaround will quickly build-up to rage quitting territory (or more likely I'll be conscious of the build-up and simply stop playing to avoid it getting to the rage quit point).

I don't care about the bullet hole my hunter shot in my stonecutting hut

Haven't you heard, those holes are important! Apparently. Or at least more important than building power generators, hospital beds, securing food supplies. Essential survival stuff is overrated and generally a bit meh. But bullet holes...they need urgent love and attention right now!

(seriously though, if the operational efficiency of things was affected by damage, then this change might be okay. But as long as, for example, a 50% wall insults and keeps out wandering animals as well as a 100% wall does, then there is just no way I'm going to care about repairing it asap. As a player, the game has to give me a valid reason for being happy to repair not being very annoyed to repair that wall asap, and ahead of building new things. But as it currently stands, the game just isn't providing that reason. It's not even a contest. All IMO).

[Listy]

can't confirm it, but it also feels like the priority tasks have been re-jigged. Now Deconstruction takes a normal place in the queue, where as before it seemed to get a priority.

[swaggeringcuban]

turning off repair was also a tactic for preserving components.  Due to how often things break down your components will dwindle to zero even if you're building nothing.  Turning off repair and keeping some in reserve was a good tactic while you're waiting for the components bench to be researched, which still allows you to build rooms/furniture etc.

[mumblemumble]

I understand it was an attempt to limit clutter in the work area, but this would be better done with say, branching stuff, like the current storage system. Have "construction" as a general tree, then repair / build under 2 sub branches