Room Scanning and Interior Zoning

[Halinder]

Perhaps among our 'Orders' tab, we could have an Inspect tool that allows us to scan areas to see how suitable they are for our colonists. We can already see the brightness of an area, but can't see if it's ugly or pleasant, a big factor on colonist morale. This would be extremely useful since I strive to make everywhere my colonists might go on a standard routine as pretty as possible.

Whiiich brings me to my second point. Cabin fever is another dent on colonist morale, one that makes fortress building somewhat harder since walling areas off automatically puts a roof over them. From what I can tell, making a no-roof zone still makes it count as an interior. If I'm right about that, then can we please get the ability to zone areas we actually want to be interiors, whilst everything else counts as part of the environment?

[_alphaBeta_]

I think we can get mostly there if the various objects in the game identify what their effects are. This should ideally be present when selecting the object for building before even being placed. The player can then do some rough math for planning purposes. There are other factors, however, that you point out such as room size and interior vs. exterior. I haven't fully tested the room size requirements for the various mood modifiers. Would be nice to see this spelled out. There's numbers floating around on the forums and wiki, but they may be outdated since they don't seem to be matching what I'm experiencing on a modern build. Perhaps I need to spend some more time with this.

A more sophisticated, but very helpful system, would show the breakdown of effects a colonist would experience of rooms the player is currently mousing over. List each effect as a line item along with specific numbers. This would alleviate any ambiguity and leave the player satisfied in their choices as they weight the various effects against space and material considerations.

Only way to accomplish now is to force a colonist in there, and see what happens. I think a system like this makes sense as an early investment in development time since the effects of anything newly introduced in future alpha builds will be fully understood by the players.