Survival Backpacks Exploring and Reasons

[Jstank]

I posted this in response to how to get colonists out into the open. I felt it needed its own thread as there was general interest. My idea is a survival backpack.

The Idea of turtling is not an issue of being too risk averse to go outside its that the distance to which you can travel and do anything lies with the mental health mechanic. When your colonists are away from a warm bed and a hot meal they get grumpy.

Often times I find my colonist walking clear across the map to pick up a fallen ration only to have enough willpower to consume the ration and return home. This is not desirable and a waste of time.

It also discourages colonists from exploring for any length of time other than to day trip to an objective to gather or kill and return straight home to their warm bed and hot meal. If colonists had a little temporary area to call home and a stash of food they could draw on for a limited amount of time where they won't freak out horribly it would be feasible to do some exploring. Every soldier or explorer understands the need to bring with them survival tools on long expeditions due to the inordinate amount of stress that traveling incurs. In this case a traveling colonist needs shelter, food and medicine.

This survival backpack will contain a tent and five or so meals. Deploy the backpack in a remote area and you will get a small indoor structure and a stash of five meals (edit and medicine). The bed will automatically be assigned to the owner of the backpack.

You could set up a temporary mining outpost and have your miners set up camp near the vein, mine it out for a few days and return home after their supplies have been spent, or you could use the tent and food stash as a forward outpost to build a more permanent secondary outpost away from your main outpost. This would also make breaking sieges with a small special forces group more manageable and fun.   

Then there has to be a need to go there. While building a secondary outpost may be fun and breaking sieges with Rim Team 6 is cool i think there should be additional motivation to going out into the great beyond.

I would further suggest reworking the research system so that the tree is actually out in the world with discoverable relics (schematics that have fallen from your mother ship and are scattered across the map). You would have to research the artifact (schematic) for several days which will require some colonists to be away from home for an extended period. Set up a little tent and pack some food for a week so the team can get the research done and return with (insert researchable item here...cough cough... geothermal generator schematic.... cough cough) This would prolong the game and add a new layer of complexity but more importantly it would be great motivation to get out there and do some exploring!

Fog of war would also enhance that feeling of I need to go exploring to reveal the map because finding the best starting spot should not be easy and this change would make finding the schematics a fun little objective to the game. Or maybe fog of war is to ambitious.

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[bullwinkle]

I like this idea, I like it a lot! +1

Could be used for all kinds of purposes.

[NoImageAvailable]

Sounds way too micromanagy and tedious not to mention pointless since even on a 400x400 jungle map travel times aren't all that long. The whole research thing sounds pretty terrible as well because why can't I just haul the schematics back to the colony? Not to mention this wouldn't help with dwarfing anyway since you can leave an underground colony the same way you can leave an outdoors one.

[BetaSpectre]

Who cares if its not needed what matters is that itd be fun to have backpacks! Who wants to make a ship as a neccesity? No one its a side project that's done cause its awesome!

[sensiman]

awesome idea! i would expand on its,so that some research areas could only be "unlocked" if you excavate/find/xenoarchaeologize some debris/ruins that cannot be hauled home. indecstructible areas wiht foreign/alien technology,either out in the open or deep in rock,where you have to extenisvely mine through or around it.pieces of material tht you can haul home but ONLY if you mine it for days,exclusively,or haul it at a VERY reduced speed(if and when synergistic tasks can be assigned,for example when 4 of more people needed to haul something home).i would liek to see rasearch option be barred from the beginning unless you find/reverse enrgineer some other artifact,relic or peice of technology,and sometimes you can be unseccessluf or poorly do it,like the medicine skill. it woudl impact on either unlocking technologies or researching them at a reduced rate.