auto-repair, auto-massage, auto-harvest, auto-mop

[607581_1452789984]

When a device like a musher or algae terrarium is low on or out of raw materials, a Deliverer will notice, and bring it supplies automatically.

But when a device breaks, the player needs to notice that condition, click on the device, click "Repair", and then wait for a Builder to come fix it.

Likewise when a plant in a Planter is ready for harvest. Likewise when a massage table is free to be used by a stressed dupe. Likewise when there's a mess.

If this is meant to be a gameplay mechanic, I don't like it. It turns a game of strategy and design into clicky-clicky whack-a-mole micromanagement.

What do you think?

 

[chromiumboy]

Perhaps as part of the prioritisation screen you could also set the default priortity for individual chores about the base (sweeping, mopping, repairs, etc) rather than the default priority of 5. This could also be extended to setting defaults for job-related tasks (e.g. setting the priority default of digging to 7 and construction to 8). If the player wants to make fine adjustments, they tweak it using the current prioritisation commands.

[PixelBattery]

I agree, but it might make things a bit 'too' easy.

Maybe you can assign a single repair-duplicate, who will repair any machine when it breaks, ignoring any other task he was doing.

Or maybe you assign a duplicate per machine for repairing.

So if they die, you will still have broken machines unless you notice.

 

Or repairing should take longer and go automatic.

 

The most important thing here is to not make the 'break' mechanic obsolete by almost instantly repairing it. But also don't make it too much of a hastle.

[Zervo]

it will beat the purpose of having the stress status.

we as a player should know, aware, and care about it.

and if we ignore it, the mess will just getting worse and worse..

I guess, it's part of the gameplay mechanic.

 

it's like a disaster, and you should never ever be able to put automatic solution on it.

 

In addition, automatic mop also a bad thing to have.

How can you let the game know when to mop contaminated water and not?

Need a different code to actually make this works

 

----

But, I agree that harvest should be able to be done automatically and like other building in the game, you should be able to put priorities on the planter.

And I also agree about the Massage table, Medical bay, and the dinner table shouldn't have an owner on it.

should just make it works like toilet, or all of other furniture and public building should have a feature where you can either lock to certain dupe or make it public access

[Masterpintsman]

23 minutes ago, Zervo said:

And I also agree about the Massage table, Medical bay, and the dinner table shouldn't have an owner on it.

should just make it works like toilet, or all of other furniture and public building should have a feature where you can either lock to certain dupe or make it public access

Some way to constrain certain duplicates into certain areas (without having to resort to closed doors) makes sense though, to be able to construct an external mining base (as an example) with some minimal living quarters nearby.

[Paegbin]

This game is about survival and management. there isn't too much to do at a certain point after you research everything and go into exploration mode. I do think an option under mop for contaminated water versus normal water would be nice. At best I could see a notification being reasonable but the game will probably never automate that whole process for you. (unless it is some crazy high research)

[Zervo]

15 hours ago, Masterpintsman said:

Some way to constrain certain duplicates into certain areas (without having to resort to closed doors) makes sense though, to be able to construct an external mining base (as an example) with some minimal living quarters nearby.

yup..

I actually made a suggestion thread about this:

 

[Interloper]

I agree with OP. In my opinion, giving the player extra clicking tasks where it makes more sense to automate makes the game monotonous and repetitive. 

I don't agree that forcing the player to click 'repair' or 'harvest' a dozen times is ever a good, or even valid, gameplay mechanic. The punishment for poor job optimization is that not enough Dups are assigned to a task such that a machine remains offline or harvesting food does not occur efficiently. 

For DF-type games like ONI, part of the appeal is that the Dups perform tasks automatically so the player does not have to individually micromanage them. The player's role should be macro-level strategy, not making the player constantly click on things to generate specific tasks. Otherwise, there is not a clear line between setting a base's overall priorities and direction (good), and assigning specific tasks to specific Dups (bad). I think the focus should be removing micromanagement wherever possible.

 

[D_x]

29 minutes ago, Interloper said:

I think the focus should be removing micromanagement wherever possible.

Yes. Through tech preferably. Early game there is a lot of micro and not much of macro, late game most repetitive tasks should be automatic. Rumba for mopping 8).

[Interloper]

2 hours ago, D_x said:

Yes. Through tech preferably. Early game there is a lot of micro and not much of macro, late game most repetitive tasks should be automatic. Rumba for mopping 8).

Hmm. I kinda disagree that research is the answer to early game micromanagement. I think micromanagement and repetitive tasks should be removed entirely from the game where possible, including repairing, planting, and cleaning. The player should always only be making strategy and planning decisions, and the Dup AI should handle all micromanagement activities.

In my opinion, using research to replace repetitive manual tasks with automatic functions is bad game design. In such a system, the player performs repetitive tasks until he earns the privilege of *not* performing them. Rather than being rewarding, that is a system that acknowledges that the core gameplay is not fun, and the reward to the player is progressing to the point where the player no longer has to do it. That's not a rewarding experience.

Instead of micromanagement, I think better game design is focus the early gameplay on discovering simple solutions to simple problems. Micromanagement and repetitive tasks should be removed altogether so as not to distract the player from the fun stuff with tedious activities. In this case, the research tree should focus on allowing the player to evolve more complex solutions to more complex problems that arise as the base expands. In other words, the research tree should push the player to develop new solutions, as his early solutions stop working.

As an example, a simple problem early on is generating O2. An early, simple solution is to set up a single generator, wire, and algae deoxydizer. However, as a base expands, the algae deoxyidizer cannot deliver O2 to multiple rooms, and does not remove accumulated CO2. Thus, the research tree allows the player to unlock gas pumps, gas piping, and gas vents, as well as air scrubbers, to move or remove different types of gases across a large base. Thus, as the game progresses, the player is forced to adopt new strategies to solve new problems, where previous, simpler solutions fail to work or are phased out. A similar concept in the game is applied to water management in that, as the game progresses, the player is forced to design new piping systems to remove and clean contaminated water and supply clean water from greater distances. This is a much more rewarding gameplay cycle than just allowing the player to automate formerly mindless and repetitive actions. If these tasks are painful for the player, why have the player do them in the first place?

To me, the interesting part of the game is designing a base around dynamic gas flow, gas pressure, and temperature flow, and orchestrating water, stress, and food requirements as the base size increases. Having to manually repair a machine, replant a farm, or clean up vomit every ten seconds is not fun, it's mindless busywork. Now, someone is going to say, if you don't want to deal with broken machines and vomit, manage your stress better. I totally agree! I want to focus on designing systems to reduce stress, not repeatedly clicking to issue repair or mop vomit tasks. These tasks should always be handled automatically because they are always mindless and tedious for the player.

 

[D_x]

21 minutes ago, Interloper said:

I think micromanagement and repetitive tasks should be removed entirely from the game where possible, including repairing, planting, and cleaning. The player should always only be making strategy and planning decisions, and the Dup AI should handle all micromanagement activities.

Yes, that is probably best possible way.

Repairing is easy, planting already kinda automatic, cleaning is the only hard one. What to clean and what to leave alone (as it is destroys! water)