A mish-mash of things for feedback

[Desamona]

Some ideas/suggestions to tweak the game to make it function a bit better:

Day/Night Job rotation:  Why do the dupes only work a 'day' shift, and why do they all do it at the same time???  It's surprising to me that 'everything' shuts down for a set period of time each cycle.  It's not like there is a moon or a sun to take advantage of, or tell you when you need to rest.. so why are they all asleep at the same time?

Which leads me to:

Hotbunking:  the ability to assign more than one dupe to a cot would be wonderful.... particularly in the early game when I am more concerned with getting things set up and functioning properly, rather than making beds that only get used 20% of a cycle.  Not efficient at all.  Hot bunking would also be another way to solve the loud snorer trait and the smelly/sick trait.

Medical Cot:  Why?  Why are these 'assigned' to a specific dupe?  Why can't an injured dupe just simply grab the first available medical cot when they are wounded?  If you have more injured than cots, they will have to wait turns.  Right now the micromanagement of getting dupes cured/well/health is rather silly and kinda doesn't work with the game.  On the upside, I do like that dupes will abandon a cot on their own once all their wounds are healed up.

Eating table/chairs:  Why are these an assigned item?  The dupes do not all eat at the same time, nor for the same length of time.  Assigning seating at the dining table is just a waste of space.  Especially if you manage to get 30 dupes in your base.  I think there should be the stress hit if the dupes go to eat at the table and there is no seat available (thereby increasing stress levels - an already built-in mechanic), but to waste all that space on something that is used less than 15% of the time....

Showers:  Oh gawds, please dial that one back a bit.  They shower the moment they get slightly dirty.  My showers run constantly.  And, no matter how grimy or lightly dirty they are, they all take the same amount of time in the shower.  Could you please make the showers like the massage tables?  Have min/max sliders to reduce the time they are in them for???? 

And while we're at it, could we just pretend for a moment that when you shower your HANDS GET CLEAN TOO?

Hand Sanitizer:  This idea that the hands can only be 'fixed' with a hand sanitizer station is a bit absurd.  It would make better sense that the hand sanitizer is available earlier on in the research tree, and can be used with just water (or polluted water, but the don't get clean hands, lol), and the hands go from grimy to lightly dirty or something equally simple.  Likewise with showers.  But, bleachstone (when you finally obtain it) ups the cleaning game:  finally the dupes get 100% clean (and stay that way for a bit, until the effect wears off).  This could also apply to the showers, as a different kind of mechanic to the alternative proposed above.

Fans:  Could we please have simple fans to help blow the gases about a room?  I'm not talking about those big, bulky gas pumps that look like green mushrooms with accordions attacking them, but rather, simple fans.  Things you might put on a desk or at your feet to blow the air around a bit and keep it circulating.  Doesn't have to move lots of air, just some for a small, confined space.  Could be a small stress reducer too, because they'd be able to be placed into rooms that are more 'relaxing' to the dupes.  Right now, reliance on stratification or gas pressure, or convection is annoying.  Especially in the early game when you are not quite established enough to really spend the resources necessary to go for the big guns in establishing a medium-sized gas system.

This also ties in with:

Vents:  We have output vents, but we don't have intake vents?  I would like to be able to place output vents in the top of a room like a dupes bedroom, and collect the CO2 that falls to the bottom of the room into intake vents, and have it pumped away that way (think modern forced air heating systems), instead of using high pressures of oxygen to 'push' the CO2 out of the rooms, or worse, build gas permeable tiles that can't be controlled as easily if something goes wrong and I need to seal off an area.

And then, lastly:

Mopping:  I love the dupes faces when they have to clean up 'sick' or 'wee' or 'polluted water', but I do wonder where that liquid goes.  Right now, when I 'drain' a lake', there is always some residual leftover water that doesn't get drained or picked up by the transfer pumps. It just kinda hangs around soaking the feet of the dupes that go by.  It would be awesome if the mop came with a bucket that collected those small amounts of 'leftover' liquid so that it can be treated and reused (or not, as the case may be needed).  In the meantime, could we please have a tool to move that little bit of liquid along?  Maybe a floor squeegee, or a waterbrush... something?

And I do find it a bit strange that I can clean up vomit that drops into my pure water tank (and sits at the bottom of said tank) with a dupe and a sponge.  Perhaps that may need a quick examine.  Just sayin'.  If you take this to its extreme conclusion, you could theoretically 'mop' up your whole water tank into....well, a single sponge. *looks left and right*  Yea.

 

Anyways, thanks for letting me list some of the things that was bugging me.  I am really enjoying the game tho, even if there are trouble spots sometimes.  Looking forward to the next update!

Cheers!

Des

[Kasuha]

2 hours ago, Desamona said:

Medical Cot:  Why?  Why are these 'assigned' to a specific dupe?  Why can't an injured dupe just simply grab the first available medical cot when they are wounded?

At present it's good they're working this way because some dupes get stuck to them when assigned and never leave until unassigned. The injure/disease mechanics are not yet fully implemented.

2 hours ago, Desamona said:

Showers:  Oh gawds, please dial that one back a bit.  They shower the moment they get slightly dirty.

It's mostly about not giving your dupes too many showers too early on and taking care they don't get too dirty for no reason. Keeping paths clean and mopping all puddles in the way is part of it. The Grimy / Sopping Wet status does not have a percent value, when they get the status they're already at 100%

2 hours ago, Desamona said:

Fans:  Could we please have simple fans to help blow the gases about a room? 

Not in current physics engine. The graphics are great but the engine doesn't support wind as far as I know, gases and liquids have no inertia, they just diffuse around.

2 hours ago, Desamona said:

Vents:  We have output vents, but we don't have intake vents?

Each gas/liquid pump is combined with intake vent. Actually it's the whole point of the pump - you pay power to get the gas/liquid into the pipe. Because once it's in the pipe, it's driven by pipe mechanics, not by pumps or pressure.

2 hours ago, Desamona said:

Mopping:  I love the dupes faces when they have to clean up 'sick' or 'wee' or 'polluted water', but I do wonder where that liquid goes.  Right now, when I 'drain' a lake', there is always some residual leftover water that doesn't get drained or picked up by the transfer pumps. It just kinda hangs around soaking the feet of the dupes that go by.

Mopped liquid is destroyed. What the pumps don't pick are often grams per tile - just put the mouse over the tile to check how much of it is there in the tooltip. Comparing that to ~1000 kg that fits in full tile, it's negligible amount.

Some people even use mopping to destroy whole pools of polluted water.

The best that the game could offer at present for saving the mopped water would be popping a bottle full of that collected water in similar fashion like when you deconstruct e.g. a hydroponics tile. It is possible, but the game lacks mechanics of handling that water - it will sit there until you select it and choose Empty Building button which will spill its contents again.

 

[Masterpintsman]

6 hours ago, Desamona said:

Fans:

 

3 hours ago, Kasuha said:

Not in current physics engine. The graphics are great but the engine doesn't support wind as far as I know, gases and liquids have no inertia, they just diffuse around.

Fans could be objects that work as gas/mesh wall tile(s) for all other purposes, but when powered move gas from one side to the other, up to a certain 'pressure' (g/tile) differential. Would help to build sensible bases and also to overcome the molasses like air speed - for a cost in power.

[Kasuha]

3 minutes ago, Masterpintsman said:

Fans could be objects that work as gas/mesh wall tile(s) for all other purposes, but when powered move gas from one side to the other, up to a certain 'pressure' (g/tile) differential. Would help to build sensible bases and also to overcome the molasses like air speed - for a cost in power.

That would be essentially a horizontal wheezewort. You can do some nifty tricks and borderline exploits with them if you put them in narrow passages but in the open they don't have much of an effect.

A real fan would be a machine that gives the gas over it an impulse. But for that the game would have to support wind. Even wheezeworts could be implemented much better if inertia was added to the physics engine.

[Masterpintsman]

2 hours ago, Kasuha said:

That would be essentially a horizontal wheezewort

Some differences: need to be built in a wall to make sense, needs power, rotateable, no cooling.