[Game Update] - 322934

[tzionut]

Quote

My dupes keep complaining about a lack of snacks every time they gather 'round the water cooler.

Not only yours...mine complain also about the lamps or the fancy steel stairs. 

[Mariilyn]

18 minutes ago, tzionut said:

Not only yours...mine complain also about the lamps or the fancy steel stairs. 

Mine are often complaining about working.

[goboking]

10 minutes ago, Mariilyn said:

Mine are often complaining about working.

Banish the loudest complainer to the pit.  That ought to straighten the rest of 'em right up.

Edited April 6, 2019 by goboking

[Sinistrem]

• Critters will no longer pass through doors set to "auto", even if a duplicant has opened it. They will pass through doors set to "open" though

Does that mean what i think and tamed ranching of shove voles inside your base no longer feels like S.C.P. spinoff game with water moats and arcane exit airlock designs for easier recontainment?

Edited April 6, 2019 by Sinistrem

[Skrivener]

8 hours ago, Ipsquiggle said:

Duplicants were earning skill experience at about 3x the rate they were tuned to, now the algorithm has been corrected.

It may be subjective but it's feeling soooo sloooow now...

[Dracian]

8 hours ago, Ipsquiggle said:

• Critters will no longer pass through doors set to "auto", even if a duplicant has opened it. They will pass through doors set to "open" though
• Pacifist trait no longer prevents digging Skills from being learned
• Can now rename storage lockers

 

Bless the devs for those !

Finger-shaped hearts

[PhailRaptor]

2 hours ago, Sinistrem said:

• Critters will no longer pass through doors set to "auto", even if a duplicant has opened it. They will pass through doors set to "open" though

Does that mean what i think and tamed ranching of shove voles inside your base no longer feels like S.C.P. spinoff game with water moats and arcane exit airlock designs for easier recontainment?

You can already do that by building the walls and doors out of Refined Metals, such as Steel.  They can't dig into Steel.

[akrabat14]

Word Error

[Sinistrem]

2 hours ago, PhailRaptor said:

You can already do that by building the walls and doors out of Refined Metals, such as Steel.  They can't dig into Steel.

They could easily get through steel doors by slipping away with passing dupes. I.e. when vole was standing near door and rushing out when rancher was leaving the room, same as hatches and other creatures. Or even worse, if the door would close before they leave door frame they'll get stuck there as if they are dug inside (cracks on backdrop) and the only way to fix that was to leave door open and wait for it to try to dig somewhere.

[JohnFrancis]

2 hours ago, Sinistrem said:

They could easily get through steel doors by slipping away with passing dupes.

If you use pneumatic doors (made of refined metal) they cannot get out when dupes pass in and out. However they can escape through mechanized airlock doors when dupes use them. Only pneumatic doors are designed to work with critters, well they were up to QOL Mk2.

[linainverse]

dupes are acting stupidly now , at least with mining. i've got the dupes on two blocks up above the floor and they didn't gave a f*** about dig underneath. "proximity" set.

[WanderingKid]

In regards to skill points and the overall xp progress, some observations.

It's too easy to assign a skill point accidentally.  Order of operations: Skill Point is notified.  Click on bar to bring up skills screen to correct dupe.  Click X to close the skill notification.  Miss.  Assign mining to your farmer.  Have no way to reverse that mistake other than a reload from the autosave.

Even when gaming the system early xp takes too long to get a dupe rolling.  I understand the 15 skill / 250 cycle target, but even abusing the system you can't get more than 2 skill points in 15 cycles.  The first skill point takes, usually, 4-5 cycles to get rolling.  I've already got another dupe queued and delivered before the first one can even start really doing his job.  If you don't have a, for example, miner on cycle 1, you're really going to hurt for things like abyssalite mining before cycle 20.

An average specialist should be able to get 4 skill points reasonably quickly.  For example, and architect should be able to get level 2 construction and Courier so they can bring supplies to the build site themselves.  A miner would by able to get to abyssalite reasonably quickly.  I assume the current restrictions are because 3 skill points makes a master painter/chef and this is not desired.

I believe these issues can be fixed relatively easily:

• Do not harden the last skill point assigned until after you've left the skills screen. Rt-Click should let you remove the skill point and reassign it until you have left.  At that point, it's permanent.
• Allow a dupe on printing to have a single skill point on arrival.  That will allow locked skills, like cooks, artists, etc to be able to be used immediately.
• Adjust the xp required to have a steeper slope.  Right now the ^(1/1.44) is too shallow.  Make it steeper so that early skill points (say 2 or 3 of them) are more easily acquired for specialists.  Allow an equivalent ratio for the later skill points to keep the C250 / 15 Skill.  Basically spike the beginning and increase the ending.
• Make a dupe's character level (# of skill points acquired) limit when they can assign upper level choices. For example, your artist starts at no restriction for Art Fundamentals, Char Level 3 for Aestetic Design, and Char Level 5 for Masterworks.  This would allow the skill points to continue to be earned, but also gate the upper skill levels for those skill abilities that are desired to be gated.  If this is too complex, make it easier: Aestetic Design costs 2 skill levels, Masterworks costs 3.  So, you'll have to bank skill points for these specialists.

Edited April 6, 2019 by WanderingKid

[Skrivener]

6 minutes ago, WanderingKid said:

It's too easy to assign a skill point accidentally.  Order of operations: Skill Point is notified.  Click on bar to bring up skills screen to correct dupe.  Click X to close the skill notification.  Miss.  Assign mining to your farmer.  Have no way to reverse that mistake other than a reload from the autosave.

Agree, can we have a confirm/cancel and exit button please?

[Hechicera]

Agree with first three points above. Haven't played new games long enough with last night's patch to have opinion on fourth.

Before the points were coming faster than I needed. Now I am toast if I don't get exactly the right mix on my first three dupes, or luck into the fourth on random print. The issue is having the skills up where the point matters like dig, cook, research, med making, groom station, farm station, engy station in time for them to be used now. Dupes starting with one point might help immensely in this early rush. There are just too many stations that need two points, and enough needing one that it isn't fun to get the perfect first three (and there becomes a perfect mix of interests and skill groupings on the first three).

[GenMcMuster]

Seconding support for a starting skill-point. Everyone could be given an entry-level job right out of the gate with the old system.

More tuning may be necessary as well for the gain rate, I'm not sure if it should take 100 cycles to  make a mechatronics engineer out of a fresh dupe.

Also, playing with this patch it feels like a huge nerf item transport considering you can't just train everyone as a gofer anymore.

Edited April 7, 2019 by GenMcMuster

[watermelen671]

On 4/5/2019 at 6:34 PM, Ipsquiggle said:

• Duplicants were earning skill experience at about 3x the rate they were tuned to, now the algorithm has been corrected.

Hecking dyslexia, I read that as:

On 4/5/2019 at 6:34 PM, Ipsquiggle said:

• Sick dupes will not wait for treatment at a doctor station if they are the only available doctor

Oof.

On 4/5/2019 at 6:34 PM, Ipsquiggle said:

• Gravitas Facility has its own ambiance

Oooh. That's a typo. 

Also shame on you for thinking you could just try and slip an update under our noses! 

WE'RE HYPER-VIGILANT FOR A REASON, WE MUST SMASH ALL THE BUGS AND REFINE THEM INTO SAND!!!

18 hours ago, akrabat14 said:

Word Error

...dang. I'm not sure which one is right now. 

Also even the Hotfixes are dyslexic, feelsgoodman.

[Skrivener]

10 hours ago, Hechicera said:

Dupes starting with one point might help immensely in this early rush.

This would certainly help; part of the problem is we used to assign a job and get the benefits immediately. Mastery was only needed to get it to stick. Now we earn the XP then get the trait when we assign the skill point *after* the earning has been done. So we're effectively pushed back a whole level from the prior system.

I don't expect the changes to be reversed but I feel like this revised skill/job approach was a fix in search of a problem. What couldn't be resolved by tweaking the existing system? Not to tell you (Klei) how to do your jobs but I am a developer/designer and it seems like a big change to push through this late in the cycle. (But my opinion is subjective since I find the changes worse than before.)

More constructively, can we highlight the skill button (orange or something) when there are skill points available? Maybe with a little number count of the points on it? This would also be handy for research not selected, that sort of thing. There are so many notifications sometimes that it's annoying and easy for things to get lost, not to mention a PITA when you click on one as one above it vanishes so you accidentally click on the notification below as it scrolls up. And the icons on buildings lose their usefulness when they're lost among a thousand sweep orders.

Generally I think a UI revise and polish pass would be helpful. Not restructuring everything, but reviewing with UX in mind. Mind dump:

• Icons are too similar to each other and differ from their related overlays.
• Sweep and mop task icons swamp everything and perhaps need a change.
• Notifications include Action items as well as Info items and sometimes it makes no sense as to why an Info can't be an Action or Actions get lost in Infos, nor is bundling them working for (for example) Skill Points. (Btw I figured out my confusion on Attributes and Skills - there's a notification bug when an Attribute (like Athletics) increases that refers to it as a Skill increase.)
• Materials data (the top right tree) gets lost on some backgrounds due to low contrast - sight impaired players can increase the size but that doesn't fix the contrast and clutters the screen.
• Non-full-screen windows should really be resizeable (eg. schedules, more than 2 and they get cut off).
• There's so much data but much of it's buried in to the UI, especially in windows you have to click to get access to and switch tabs around and scroll down. It would be nice to bring it more to the surface and reduce the clicks with smarter building icons, animations, hover info, something.

My 2.5c at almost midnight after a crash opening the materials pane. #ONILife

[suicide commando]

@Skrivener Having the skill button highlighted would be a bad idea. The job board, now skill board, already has an icon appear if there are unspent skillpoints. The reason is that in the later part of the game, you will have dupes with unassigned skillpoints you do not want to assign. Having a notification bug you at the top of the screen is just annoying.
 

[4ewka]

You gave us a conveyor blocker. But did not give automation and sensor resources. That would turn on and off the conveyor blocker. Otherwise, the lock on the conveyor is useless without automation.

[GenMcMuster]

Further feedback. I'm getting masterwork artwork out before I have a single dupe with any considerable morale needs. I have not had to worry about going over morale requirements at any point so far. Contrast with the previous system where morale was a constant consideration when assigning jobs.

 

Also: Ice-fans are a handy way to melt down loose ice to get cold bottled water, I'm really liking them for chilling slime prior to excavation and for managing early game battery, generator and deoxydizer cooling.

However, they'd be a lot more convenient if they could warm up say 200kg of ice at a time rather than 50kg. My dupes spend far more time running ice to the fans than they do cranking them. Would also match the bottle size of emptiers

Edited April 7, 2019 by GenMcMuster

[WanderingKid]

19 minutes ago, GenMcMuster said:

However, they'd be a lot more convenient if they could warm up say 200kg of ice at a time rather than 50kg. My dupes spend far more time running ice to the fans than they do cranking them.

While I applaud your adoption of the new tech, I don't think chilling down *biomes* is what they're made for.

[GenMcMuster]

2 hours ago, WanderingKid said:

While I applaud your adoption of the new tech, I don't think chilling down *biomes* is what they're made for.

Slime blocks are low mass and low heat capacity. building and melting ice sculptures on slime blocks will get you the same effect as you only have to lower the temp of the slime below 20C for it to die off.

 

I'm not asking to be able to cool the oil biome, I'm asking for more crank time and less running back and forth by allowing dupes to carry more ice per trip

Edited April 7, 2019 by GenMcMuster

[Hechicera]

After another start, I feel more confident that if dupes start with an initial skill point, then the current rate of gain is fine. The initial point helps with the first rush of getting exactly the right dupes in exactly the right (too many) initial skills. It also helps with dupes added much later in the game.

If dupes don't start with an initial point then current rate is slightly too slow.

Perhaps another way to help both mid/late game printed dupes catch up, and to help with the initial rush to use stations as fast as they pop from research, make skill point gain on a curve. Dupes get the first one quite fast, with the next one fast but progressively slower, where eventually they take a while to get one. Like the old MMO level gain curves. Maybe it is already on a curve, in that case, the first couple if points need to be lowered.

 

[goboking]

1 hour ago, Hechicera said:

Perhaps another way to help both mid/late game printed dupes catch up, and to help with the initial rush to use stations as fast as they pop from research, make skill point gain on a curve. Dupes get the first one quite fast, with the next one fast but progressively slower, where eventually they take a while to get one. Like the old MMO level gain curves. Maybe it is already on a curve, in that case, the first couple if points need to be lowered.

A few more alternatives could be mid- or late-game "learning/training" stations or some sort of mentor system wherein working in proximity to more experienced dupes speeds the rate of skill point acquisition.

[linainverse]

nice AI work there, devs.

Spoiler