Alpha 17 is on public unstable branch

[Aerial]

I've only gotten to play A17 for an hour or so, but here are my impressions so far:

1) Overall, I love the new graphics.  The new water effect looks really nice, though I worry it will have an impact on my game performance given that my gaming laptop is getting pretty old.  It would be nice to have the option to turn it off.  The bushes and stone chunks look less cutesy and, to me, seem to fit the feel of the game better.  However, now the green of the wild healroot stands out in contrast and doesn't look like it belongs.  It's kind of plastic-plant-green instead of fitting with the color palate of the map.  (This was in the temperate forest.)

2)  My only medical experience in game so far has been bandaging some minor wounds, but it felt like it went a lot faster.  Instead of having to wait through a progress bar for each tiny hare's bite, I think there was only one progress bar and all three wounds were updated to bandaged.  I really like the change.  I am assuming the treatment time is now tied somehow to the severity of the wounds, which makes sense.

3)  I don't like the new season names.  "1st of spring" might seem derivative since several other games have used it, but the upside is that it's unambiguous.  "1st of Aprimay" is... odd, I guess.  If that had been in place when I started playing, I'm sure I would have shrugged and not thought a whole lot about it once I had the seasons figured out, but as a change now, I don't really see it improving the flavor of the game.

That's all I've got so far.  Thanks for making such a great game, Tynan!

[Pink Photon]

3)  I don't like the new season names.  "1st of spring" might seem derivative since several other games have used it, but the upside is that it's unambiguous.  "1st of Aprimay" is... odd, I guess.  If that had been in place when I started playing, I'm sure I would have shrugged and not thought a whole lot about it once I had the seasons figured out, but as a change now, I don't really see it improving the flavor of the game.

I actually had the opposite response. I thought it was a nice touch.

[ChJees]

Initial feedback;
Early game is a lot harder now. Especially since i got unlucky by getting 3 colonists in row that could not fight . Actually had to rely on a turret or two now. Also my usual strategy of using attack animals helped mitigate it.
Also i am not a fan at all of the possibility of wasting a ore node. Got really bloody unlucky to get my colonist to fail 3 times in row to mine steel with 90% yield chance. Instead of entirely wasting it can't we just get half instead? Not much of a smack in the face then.

As for combat... Well, the sappers that get sent to me one time had nobody capable of shooting. Should make it so sappers at least get one raider that can shoot so they are not sitting ducks if they only send grenadiers. Why? Because i just ended up siccing my muffalos at them

[BlackSmokeDMax]

3)  I don't like the new season names.  "1st of spring" might seem derivative since several other games have used it, but the upside is that it's unambiguous.  "1st of Aprimay" is... odd, I guess.  If that had been in place when I started playing, I'm sure I would have shrugged and not thought a whole lot about it once I had the seasons figured out, but as a change now, I don't really see it improving the flavor of the game.

Just having this discussion now on Steam as well. I think the reasoning is the hemispheres now act opposite of each other as on earth. So if you kept calling them by season names, it is wrong for half the planet.

[XeoNovaDan]

With a little run-through a deeply-observed early game, things have been very smooth and mostly bug-free (bar the cooler bug), and it's been a refreshing and enjoyable experience. Skills like mining actually have meaning to them with the yield chance, which inclines you to only use your best miners as opposed to your best on high priority, and then any Joe colonist on priority 4 with it for if they have nothing better to do.

I've noticed that food poisoning has been really crippling though as consciousness ties in with a lot of significant capacities - and that's understandable as a punishment of having a sh*tty cook. Personally, I'd perhaps consider toning it down a little as it's really quite debilitating as it stands, but only slightly - but it's also easily bypassed with our lord and saviour nutrient paste... not so good for tribals though.

Shooting Skill still bears very little weight, and that's one of my minor peeves with A16 (which was when I started delving deep) - but that's another subject for another matter.

I also like the multitude of food rebalances, and I've yet to set up a proper economy but it looks pretty tasty. I also noticed the chain shotgun when testing on another map in dev mode, and it seems like quite an intriguing weapon. When I first saw Shield Belt, I initially thought of it as a crude form of a personal shield, but was quite surprised when it was the full fat package.

In terms of graphics changes, I certainly like the new raspberry bushes and chunks, but my opinion of the new water texture is mixed: while it is meant to symbolise flowing with the rivers and that, it looks ever so slightly trippy (to a limited extent) when zoomed out and at high speed, and then it doesn't really look that great zoomed in. I'd propose making the 'waves' a little more subtle to tackle that. Also the contrast between shallow and deep water is a bit on the high side too.

Overall, I'm looking forward to when the final A17 releases very much, and I'll be sure to continue with my current A17 colony too. Thanks for giving us players the opportunity to test it and essentially play a role in sculpting part of the final product

[Hatti]

Infections are WAY too heavy now! The game mostly turned into a doctor micromanagement game. Absolutly no chance to get not infected after a long fight.

Fail chance on mining? Where do the resources go? why do they magicly disappear completly? Its compacted steel, so how is a pawn able to not get even dirt out of a failed mining operation? Should be better if the yield is reduced by x% instead of full loss which can be VERY painfull

New gfx is nice but the water.. first i though i had graphics issues till i realized A17 have new water. Personally i dont like the look of it. It feels too strange in the whole gfx setup. The animations, especially on speed 3, are WAY to irritating

[BlackSmokeDMax]

Fail chance on mining? Where do the resources go? why do they magicly disappear completly? Its compacted steel, so how is a pawn able to not get even dirt out of a failed mining operation? Should be better if the yield is reduced by x% instead of full loss which can be VERY painfull

I'm hoping that is just in regards to getting a stone chunk from mining mountains/hills.

[Jstank]

I just started a game by the river, (I like the new water animation btw) and it got me thinking... Should the water have higher beauty? I think large bodies of water are considered beautiful in general.

[Quazimojojojo]

So did he re-separate repair and construction, or are they still one work priority? That was easily my biggest complaint for A16 and one of the main reasons I stopped playing until this update. It's ended at least one colony of mine where I wanted the builders to emergency deconstruct walls supporting roofs over important spots, or to just deconstruct the roofs themselves, but they instead insisted on repairing things first. Yes, you can manually force them to deconstruct, or build, things but it's frustrating to do for any more than a handful of items since pawns like to immediately walk away from the work area upon completion of a task. Sometimes directly into the fire I want the rain to put out.

[Alenerel]

Seeing that rivers is a thing, can we get bridges? Like being able to build one. I dont know how they would work on world map tho, maybe some random autogenerated ones along the rivers which you could tear apart if you went to that tile, or you could just build a bridge by going to a river tile.

About building the bridges themselves, idk if you already have an idea but I have a slight one. It is to make a new item called "support beam" or something like that, and each support beam lets you build a floor around it (1 or 2 tiles around it) and more support beams. The main problem I see with this is that you wouldnt need 2 (and make the road in the center of the two) so it wouldnt be "realistic". Another problem would be that you would need to micro the shit out of it to build it like build support beam, build floor, another beam, another floor, another beam, another floor, etc, which would be annoying. Still these two problems should be able to be solved easily like for example directly lay the bridge layout entirely instead of beam by beam.

About the seasons, well, I agree about the hemisphere thing... Actually I prefer them to be called quarters rather than quauntrums or whatever it is said because of... That, difficult to write, difficult to spell.

Pls bring megatherium name back.

[DariusWolfe]

Quazimojojojo,

I only played briefly, but I'm pretty sure they're still grouped together.

However, hope is not lost, unless you're averse to mods. Fluffy's Work Tab gives you some seriously fine-tooth control over the various subtasks within the existing work priorities. I can tell all pawns to carry materials to a blue-print for instance, but only allow my highest skilled builders to do the work; I can prioritize removing floors, or roofs, or more likely for me, completely disallow my skilled crafters from doing this kind of brute-force labor.

Of course, this is still only available for A16 at this time, but Fluffy's been pretty quick in the past; I expect this one to take a bit longer, since Tynan did some heavy lifting with the work tab.

[klopkr]

I'm really enjoying alpha 17 but I think the ancient asphalt roads are a little narrow.

They represent ancient highways right? So they should be wider than a normal path to fit several cars.

[Skinnay]

Thanks for the great update Tynan.

Several times on playthroughs last night I was experiencing issues with controlling indoor temperatures. They were rooms that were labeled as "indoors," had full roof coverage, but were entirely unaffected by attempts to heat the room. The indoor area would have exactly the same temperature as outside, despite campfires, heaters, etc, just as if it was missing a wall section. These were room designs I've used for many versions with no issue. I can share savefiles if it helps.

[Rei-No]

I'm one of those that decided to play this off Steam, for a reason, when you make a game Steam's you give up all your rights of ownership. So I,ve kept the one I love to play off of Steam, please allow those of us to stay true to the Orginal release,  part of the update process. I'm sure there are many like me, that know the truth about Steam and keep games we love off of it. I'd love to test for this game, very much so, but not on Steam.

[Tynan]

Thank you for the thoughts and stories everyone. Working on today's update.