Observations and Suggestions

[G-Tek]

Greetings,

And thanks for letting us into the Alpha/Beta.   Your system-in-a-box may be the best colony simulation game ever made.

 

I have played this for more than a few hours and have a few observations and suggestions.  I know that many of these may be covered in your plans, so please take these with a fair amount of your favorite seasoning.

 

1) Suggestion: Any machine with a gas input or output should use piping for both.

-  For example, I shouldn't have to put a water pump under water.   I would only really need a water inlet pipe.

- Consider that I could then chain piped equipment together;  Such as an water source going into water pump, then into a oxygen electrolysis machine hydrogen which outputs into a pump, then into a hydrogen power generator (with the electrolysis oxygen output venting into a separate pipe).

- The electrolysis machine really should have piped outputs anyways, as the 2-to-1 output mix is actually very explosive.

 

2)  Suggestion:  Water and air pipe valves.

- Given the previous suggestion, it may be good to have control of entire piping networks.

 

3)  Advanced cooking is currently pointless, as there is no risk in not having it.

- I can have a colony eating nothing but mush-bars for 20+ cycles without a single illness.  I've done this with three colonies so far.

- Suggestion:  Eating anything without advance cooking preparation should have risk, including blossoms.  For example.  Eating lice should make you puke; and rightfully so.

- Suggestion:  Make water and food separate.   Not eating for a week is stressful, not drinking for a week is fatal.  Perhaps require secondary water filtration to prevent illness (again under advanced cooking).    I understand this is extra management that you may not want in the game.

 

4)  Stress management is poor use of time.

- I've only come up with two ways to reduce very high stress.  Either juggle the dups into tables at high priority, or built one table per dup and juggle the priorities.  Both are frankly a waste of my time.

- Suggestion:  Add an adjustable threshold to the massage table.  That way I can build one table per dupe, set it to a specific level and let the dups de-stress themselves.  For example.  Set a table to priority 8 and 30%, so the assigned dup will automatically use it above 30% (until 0%) and only if there isn't a critical task to be done).

 

5)  Gas pumping doesn't seem to work very well.

- If the intention is to 'pump' then I should be able to pump a closed room down to a near vacuum, or compress a room by pumping into it at high pressure.  If the intention is just to 'fan' air as a blower, then the way it works now is mostly fine.

- Suggestion.  At the least, please add a tool-tip for what value 'maximum pressure' is supposed to be.   For example, it would be to see a tip such as 'stops pumping when air concentration is above 1400g' or something like that.

 

6)  There appear to be hidden priorities which are the same as the assigned priority.

-  For example; Even with the microbmush set to prioiry 7, dups will deliver water to it even when there are priority 8 and 9 tasks for them to do.  This doesn't appear to be the case when there is only one task for that machine.  For example, sand delivery to the air purifier.

 

 

Thanks!

 

 

(btw.  Figurative Maxwell's demon to actual Maxwell's demon; nice transition)

[scientas]

4 hours ago, G-Tek said:

 

1) Suggestion: Any machine with a gas input or output should use piping for both.

 

Agree that things like coal generator should be able to have exhaust pipes attached. Disagree with the water pump example as there needs to be a starting point to the piping network and the gas and water pumps are just that.

4 hours ago, G-Tek said:

2)  Suggestion:  Water and air pipe valves.

Don't these exist already?

4 hours ago, G-Tek said:

3)  Advanced cooking is currently pointless, as there is no risk in not having it.
 

Being fixed in next update.

4 hours ago, G-Tek said:

4)  Stress management is poor use of time.

I think the easy fix for this is to have needs listed as a job and add it to the priority chain. Then prioritizing massage tables and medical tables would cause injured and stressed dupes to path there until the job is done. Kind of think mess tables should fall under this category as well.

4 hours ago, G-Tek said:

5)  Gas pumping doesn't seem to work very well.

Think this is more to do with gas behavior than the pump mechanics.

4 hours ago, G-Tek said:

6)  There appear to be hidden priorities which are the same as the assigned priority.
 

It seems that maintenance trumps jobs in priority, Delivery/sweeping/repair all seem to be ahead of task even though they are all at different places in the list order.

[mr_anderson]

Id recommend playing the game a little more, then you will understand why some things are how they are. For example, why doesnt every machine have a pipe connection? Because the game would become so automated , it wouldn't be fun to play anymore.

 

[heckubis]

sweeping priority is based on the box not the 1 -9 on the sweep button moping is prioritized on the button . the electrolizer has no pump in it it uses 240 energy just for its task making it also be a pump would further increase its energy cost. being able to put a directional pump on an open pipe id understand but I cant expect the water to pump itself.

[Last Templar]

I think Dupes should have a priority 1-9 where they will stop everything they are doing and will take some love time for themselves, like have a massage take a shower etc..... There should definitely be a setting on the massage table telling a dupe to take a massage when he reaches 50, 60% stress, but that is just for early game, as soon as you have sculptures and paintings up (OP BTW) you will never need to use a massage table again.

[G-Tek]

9 hours ago, scientas said:

Don't these exist already?

Valves for water and gas do not already exist.   (I don't mean the pipes).

9 hours ago, scientas said:

Being fixed in next update.

This is good!

9 hours ago, scientas said:

there needs to be a starting point to the piping network and the gas and water pumps are just that.

To be clear, there would be starting point.   It would be another pipe with an inlet.

See the following example:

(The pump itself does not need to be underwater).

 

 

 

[G-Tek]

8 hours ago, mr_anderson said:

Id recommend playing the game a little more, then you will understand why some things are how they are. For example, why doesnt every machine have a pipe connection? Because the game would become so automated , it wouldn't be fun to play anymore.

 

I've played this game plenty and understand it well.

I completely disagree with your assertion of "fun".

I expect that as they add more elements to the farther reaches of the map, automation will be mandatory.  i.e. If you don't automate, you won't be able to keep up the pace required to survive.  I believe that your dupes will have more important work to due, other than pumping water.

[G-Tek]

3 hours ago, Last Templar said:

I think Dupes should have a priority 1-9 where they will stop everything they are doing and will take some love time for themselves, like have a massage take a shower etc..... There should definitely be a setting on the massage table telling a dupe to take a massage when he reaches 50, 60% stress, but that is just for early game, as soon as you have sculptures and paintings up (OP BTW) you will never need to use a massage table again.

Nope.   I constantly have certain dups going out to do the "dirty work".

Their stress level increases dramatically more than the dups who just stay in the base.  The dups in the base have no stress.

 

(I also don't wait for my dups to get stressed too much and just rotate them.   This is a play-style not a requirement;  You can stress your own dups as much as you want.)

[Cyberboy2000]

13 minutes ago, G-Tek said:

Valves for water and gas do not already exist.   (I don't mean the pipes).

What do you call this then:

[G-Tek]

8 minutes ago, Cyberboy2000 said:

What do you call this then:

See that's a good comment.

 

I should have specified that I would like to see a regular shut-off valve, not a pressure compensation valve; which as you pointed out, is already in the game.

 

They usually look like this:

 

Or like this:

 

 

 

 

 

[Cyberboy2000]

1 minute ago, G-Tek said:

See that's a good comment.

 

I should have specified that I would like to see a regular shut-off valve, not a pressure compensation valve; which as you pointed out, is already in the game.

I get your point, but I think I'd rather see the valves we already have get a 0 pressure option. (Though I haven't actually tested them, so if I'm missing something feel free to point it out)

[mr_anderson]

1 hour ago, G-Tek said:

I've played this game plenty and understand it well.

I completely disagree with your assertion of "fun".

I expect that as they add more elements to the farther reaches of the map, automation will be mandatory.  i.e. If you don't automate, you won't be able to keep up the pace required to survive.  I believe that your dupes will have more important work to due, other than pumping water.

Of course they will add more elements that will benefit you for automating your base in late game(hopefully).

Im saying if you implement an element that is automated from the beginning of the game (like automated in/out-puts) it will become too easy. I think automating your base should be a fairly hard task, but once you've done it, it will feel more rewarding. For example, i like the idea of automated robots that do chores such as delivering water and sweeping resources from the ground, mopping etc. Now, robots shouldn't be an easy goal to reach, so i feel like it would be balanced.

As for the other suggestions- i completely agree, however i have seen similar posts so im pretty sure most of it is being worked on.