Further Thoughts on the Update as a whole

[BlueLance]

2 hours ago, Saturnus said:

Welcome back. You must have been away quite a while since the dupe stats was capped to 26 athletics (33 with twinkletoes) in early November or there about. 

Ah ok I must have missed that, I never pay attention to the levels really,since they most all capped athletics first.

[The Plum Gate]

42 minutes ago, Byste said:

I mean that, say, you train a dupe to 100% mastery of farming and gofer. They only get the +farming OR the +athletics, depending on which job is active... or neither if they are unassigned. 100% mastery only enables them to train the next tier of that job. I think it should confer the training gained to the dupe permanently once they reach 100% of something.

 Yes I agree, or at least allow skill progression underneath the bonus. The job sysyem changed like this would be less of a cap.

[chemie]

4 hours ago, SheedLa said:

With that in mind I think that the problem with the new update is that poles and tubes are kinda endgame and before you get them you're stuck with slow and not-so-strong dupes.

Poles require quite a few resources and heat management to be deployed in enough places and tubes are the last in research tree (which now takes tons of water) AND requires plastic, which in turn requires exosuits (with grinded hat), which in turn requires refined metals, which in turn requires heat management... you get the point.
To get to plastic you have to have all the systems in place already, so when you actually get your tubes, you typically have already dealt with almost all difficulties without them.

Now before the update you could do that ok, while after the update you have to grind hard just to get to that point.

 

TL;DR: I'm all for the optimizations, but I'd rather have the right tools at the right time instead of grind and only refine your systems when actual problems are already solved.

I think this issue was before this update.  By the time you are ready for tubes, you do not need them.  You have to get food, water, oxygen all longterm solutions, explore the map for geysers, pipe geysers, fix heat, engineer cooling for plastics etc which would have been easier with tubes but now it is done....

Same for conveyers.  By end game, I don't have much for my dupes so why not carry stuff around.  What are you supposed to convey after 200 cycles of manually feeding coal?  Nice but not needed.

[clickrush]

@Saturnus

My preview base isn't at the point where I had these problems yet. Can you describe a few things to clear up why your dupes are having those problems?

How many dupes do you use? How are they assigned? What are you trying to build and which systems are already built?

[Hechicera]

3 hours ago, chemie said:

By the time you are ready for tubes, you do not need them.

That has been my experience too. My bases have been stable long before I needed tubes or likely conveyors.

Exosuits have gone from highly situational, to useful more often. I have always used poles.

While I enjoy fiddling with new things, the one thing I think that left me head scratching on this update is the "those tunnels won't dig themselves". You have to have gotten "there" first to then have a need for a faster way of getting dupes or items to "there". So those things seem more like end game convenience items than game play stages to me. Or cool debug mode toys, but I don't use debug mode.

That said, on the "those tunnels won't dig themselves" thing. On the run I just started, and it is very early, I grabbed a dupe (a Mae) with base +4 dig, mole hand (+3) for a native +7. Turn 12 she is now digging L2 for +6 more so 13 total dig at Cycle 12.  Tooltip +325% dig speed. At cycle 12 85% of the home base is excavated bare, and part into one nearby biome. This is with a current Athletic -3 (Light Wounds status - from digging up hatches). She had no interest in digging either, but does in building, and has a +4 base cooking, so I have plenty she can do later.

I need more real game experience with specialized dupes. I pulled up my last pre-jobs save at cycle 118, and those dupes have no leveled dig skill higher than 6. The difference between 6 and 13 matters, and Mae is dig 13 and still Tier 2. She will have 16 dig at the last tier dig job. Then once I need fewer diggers, with a little effort (since she likes build) can get construction 9 (job tier 3 is +9, base 0), best pre-job dupe is 7, so more than competitive. And with a little more time she can cook (not an interest), which will always be needed this revision, and that will get Cook 10 (Base 4 + 6 job max tier). That is useful, but does not compete as well with my pre-job cooks at 14 and 17. Of course all the pre-job dupes have Athletics well over 20.

 

 

 

[m0ver]

9 hours ago, BlueLance said:

Meanwhile I am sitting here and enjoying it all haha. No longer do my dupes destroy and build entire areas withing the space of a few cycles. I do agree with the Anemic dupes being hit really hard, they either need to be sped up, or become farmers or something that requires them to hardly move because they are otherwise worthless. 

1 Miner and 1 Gardener at the beggining ensure you can get yourself a food supply as well as expand (Miner mines harder materials and normal dupes mine softer ones) Excluding the fact that I feel the food takes longer to roll in I am no daunted or suffering from the new systems, but my one anemic dupe literally crawls and was forced to become the gardener. Which is fine thankfully.

I agree we have been spoilt with speed, 50 Athletics and a dupe will literally fly through anything. At least now poles have a bigger use (Although I already loved them) and the tubes do too. 

But it was more fun to build stuff and it still took too long IMHO. Dunno, but I like creating complex buildings, destroying them and rebuilding.

Since that is too slow now, the game is simply...boring?

[GrindThisGame]

On 1/28/2018 at 11:38 AM, Saturnus said:

On every play-through up till now I've lost the will to live and considered throwing the laptop out the window between cycle 120 and 150

I have a similar feeling at cycle 120-200. I want to hit the 5x speed button but instead I go for a jog or eat lunch while they work  Maybe Klei wants us to take health breaks.

[mickaux]

The game experience has changed, that's for sure. What's extremely new is that for the first time I feel forced to develop different stages in my base's life. For instance, let's take exploration. You need qualified miners - which is not a problem - however, those miners have to survive in the unfriendly biomes, just like real miners, therefore you have to build outposts, provide oxygen for them and so on. Previously one would just run for exosuits or rely on absurd athletic traits. So it's going really slowly, however I can feel the game now. It's not easy, but at least it's a game, not just a sandbox.

[Saturnus]

5 hours ago, clickrush said:

@Saturnus

My preview base isn't at the point where I had these problems yet. Can you describe a few things to clear up why your dupes are having those problems?

Well. To explore you need to dig. And for more exotic builds that require exosuits. Great. Trouble is with the giant nerf to speed that -6 Athletics is for a miner they usually don't even make it half-way to the job before they have to pee, or eat, or sleep. So you really never get anything done after a certain point. The dupes spend most of their time getting interrupted in their current job and dropping the stuff they were carrying which then needs someone to pick it up, so even more jobs gets neglected. You just have a constant spiral of job not getting done. It's not that there are any emergencies, it's just that digging near the oil biome can take 10s of cycles just to clear out a 4x8 tile area. And then 10s of cycles more to build what you wanted there.

[Ipsquiggle]

Hello, would it be possible to post some of the bases that are currently in this slow phase?

[mickaux]

There is one solution for that: outposts. As long as you're not able to put an exosuit on a qualified dupe, there's no other solution for succesful exploration.

@Ipsquiggle here's one example, trying to find some geysers to move on.

Cosmos Cycle 76.sav

 

[Saturnus]

5 minutes ago, mickaux said:

There is one solution for that: outposts. As long as you're not able to put an exosuit on a qualified dupe, there's no other solution for succesful exploration.

Well. There is. I scrapped beds and mess tables now and just let the dupe sleep and eat on the floor. I also place restroom and small food caches all over. But it feels like a band aid. A bad solution to a problem that should not exist.

If beds and mess tables was not automatically assigned to a dupe with no way of automatically unassign them, then dupes would just seek the nearest available bed/mess table and the problem would be mostly solved.

[mickaux]

1 minute ago, Saturnus said:

Well. There is. I scrapped beds and mess tables now and just let the dupe sleep and eat on the floor. I also place restroom and small food caches all over. But it feels like a band aid. A bad solution to a problem that should not exist.

Why so? The early-game stage has just been prolonged, that's all. That was an issue everyone was so unhappy about. I agree 100% that the idea of running for 1/4 of a cycle to work just to turn around cause oh, I forgot to pee before, is absurd. On the other hand, I have a toilet in my job. And something for lunch.

Well, actually this last thing is quite clever. Maybe we could let the dupes carry some food with themselves? Backpack upgrade?

[Saturnus]

See, if something that took 5 cycles to build now takes 15 cycles which seems about right. That translates to it taking 1 hour and 40 minutes longer real time on normal speed. Now we probably all run the game on 3 times speed at all times but why should we. The game should be playable on standard speed. And it just isn't at the moment. It is much too slow now.

[clickrush]

Building outposts is probably a good idea. But the endresult has to have some kind of positive net effect, except the game is meant to be slower in progress.

[PhailRaptor]

36 minutes ago, mickaux said:

Why so? The early-game stage has just been prolonged, that's all. That was an issue everyone was so unhappy about.

Uh...  where exactly are the complaints that early game was too short?  I've never seen any.  Off the top of my head, the only complaint that might be construed that way is Mealwood.  But "food is too easy!" is a far cry from "early game doesn't last long enough".  Unless you are referring to the old complaints from 4 or 5 updates ago, where people were actively competing to see how few cycles they can complete the research tree?  4 or 5 updates ago is a long time to be using that as a data-point...

And if the solution to this hypothetical problem is to make the rest of the game borderline unplayable, somehow I feel like there has to be a better solution to said problem.

[Mangrove]

Apart from all the hat dancing/job switching, my main issue with this update is that there is no longer a clear overview of the priorities. In the priority overlay, when there are so many exceptions/overrides from the assigned jobs, what you see is not what you get.

On that note, I used the 1-9 priorities a lot and I think people would have used priority 2-4 a lot more if you had the option to choose a lower default value.

And one last thing, while some of the dupes look really stylish in these new hats, the short haired ones became really hard to differentiate from each other. Their hair is really the only thing that set them apart, it's a little odd to hide that behind hats or uniforms. Maybe add a "hide hat" box on the dupe info screen?

Who's... that... pokemon duplicant?

[CobraA1]

I think the issue the developers are primarily trying to address is that the priority system didn't really work for everybody. One the one hand, if you are very careful about your priorities, they can work effectively for you. On the other hand: Players who aren't careful about their priorities often ended up crawling higher and higher and higher and eventually they're hitting priority 9, and they start making too many things priority 9, and they get frustrated when the dupes are spread too thin at top priority and nothing seems to be getting done.

It definitely needs a lot of tweaking, but I think this is an attempt by the developers to do something that would work for more people.

[Atlas888]

28 minutes ago, CobraA1 said:

I think the issue the developers are primarily trying to address is that the priority system didn't really work for everybody. One the one hand, if you are very careful about your priorities, they can work effectively for you. On the other hand: Players who aren't careful about their priorities often ended up crawling higher and higher and higher and eventually they're hitting priority 9, and they start making too many things priority 9, and they get frustrated when the dupes are spread too thin at top priority and nothing seems to be getting done.

It definitely needs a lot of tweaking, but I think this is an attempt by the developers to do something that would work for more people.

Im not sure if that is it, they actually came out and said why they focused on Jobs, and a big part of is to assist in the AI of the plebs. They were trying to fix the situation where you had a dig/build project on the other side of the map, and one of your filthy dupes runs all the way over, digs one tile, then runs all the way back to the base to deliver algae to a deoxidizer instead of digging the high priority tiles *right next to them*

Unfortunately now it sounds like if you do something like build a ladder to explore from your base, you wait for a "Digger" to go dig one tile, then a "Gopher" to deliver the sandstone, then a "Builder" builds *one* ladder. Then they rotate through the next one. Either that, or you are manually switching hats. To be fair, im just gleaning this from reading others' posts. I've been effectively scared away from updating to the preview build due to all the negative feedback. And the thought of a Cycle 300 peasant running at the same speed as a Cycle 1 peasant is just too much for me. If this lack of progression sticks then i'll turn to editing the game in order to compensate.

 

[Hechicera]

What possible use is a preference for "Tidy"?

No upgrade path, no bonuses.

[mickaux]

15 hours ago, Saturnus said:

See, if something that took 5 cycles to build now takes 15 cycles which seems about right. That translates to it taking 1 hour and 40 minutes longer real time on normal speed. Now we probably all run the game on 3 times speed at all times but why should we. The game should be playable on standard speed. And it just isn't at the moment. It is much too slow now.

Yes - the top speed shouldn't be standard. However you could easily resarch everything and build the top tier machinery within 3-4 hours in the previous updates. And yes, you would need to use top speed for that, but still.

I'm not arguing with the fact, that it's too slow now - some gamers may just find it challenging.

14 hours ago, PhailRaptor said:

Uh...  where exactly are the complaints that early game was too short?  I've never seen any.  Off the top of my head, the only complaint that might be construed that way is Mealwood.  But "food is too easy!" is a far cry from "early game doesn't last long enough".  Unless you are referring to the old complaints from 4 or 5 updates ago, where people were actively competing to see how few cycles they can complete the research tree?  4 or 5 updates ago is a long time to be using that as a data-point...

 

It would usually take me about 2-3 hours of gameplay to set up a complex base. I'm refering to the main idea of prolonging the game at all stages. It would be absurd to play, let's say, Civ6 and discover all lands and nuclear weapon after some time. I know it's a different type of game and everything, but still - the change from satysfying sandbox, yet with unclear purpose, to the real colony with all difficulties - that's a good move. I'm not saying everything is perfect, just that the main direction is right in my opinion.

[goboking]

36 minutes ago, mickaux said:

I know it's a different type of game and everything, but still - the change from satysfying sandbox, yet with unclear purpose, to the real colony with all difficulties - that's a good move. I'm not saying everything is perfect, just that the main direction is right in my opinion.

You're commenting on an end game that hasn't even been announced, yet alone implemented.  You can't offer informed commentary on the end of a race if the finish line hasn't even been decided.

[mickaux]

18 minutes ago, goboking said:

You're commenting on an end game that hasn't even been announced, yet alone implemented.  You can't offer informed commentary on the end of a race if the finish line hasn't even been decided.

Not exactly. I'm stating, that overcoming the difficulties of exploration in early game is a new purpose and a new challenge, that wasn't there with dupes running around with 50 athletics. Let's take a look at the challenges that were made up, just to make this early stage more challenging.

[Oozinator]

39 minutes ago, mickaux said:

Not exactly. I'm stating, that overcoming the difficulties of exploration in early game is a new purpose and a new challenge, that wasn't there with dupes running around with 50 athletics. Let's take a look at the challenges that were made up, just to make this early stage more challenging.

Yes, everything will be fine, we are in klei's hand ^^

[clickrush]

14 hours ago, Hechicera said:

What possible use is a preference for "Tidy"?

No upgrade path, no bonuses.

I think that specialisation shows one of the main intents of the new system. The soft/hard priority split and jobs like Tidy and Farm, are the things that first convinced me of the new system.

In the old system I would try to do fine grained job priorities and task filters, so there is always a couple dupes that will prioritize the "basic needs stuff" such as harvest, mop and other housekeeping. I wanted them to help with other things too such as mining and building when they have time, but that made the priority system fragile as it forced me to keep the other jobs below the priority of the housekeeping jobs.

Now with the soft/hard priority split I can freely give tasks from 1-5 without worrying that my toilets will not be cleaned or that my farms will not be harvested in time.

In General...

I still think that the change is a big improvmement on paper. But the reports of people who had time to reach larger bases with 100+ cycles makes me think that it needs tweaking.

The old attribute leveling made it so the duplicants will get very fast. But they also kind of needed to. Sure, Farmers, Operators and Cooks can be slow. But most other jobs are quite dependend on being reasonably fast.

A Miners, and Builders are the primary jobs for exploration and progression and they need to be able to get to under or non-developed places reasonably quickly and back again.

Another thing that was also mentioned in this thread I think was rolling attributes. It just feels bad to completely ignore the interests of the dupes, but rolling high on the attributes you actually want (such as Digging for a Miner), is far more beneficial than the interest itself (as well as having high athletics). Not only is it better early on, but also later on, since a dupe with interest in Mining will never reach the attribute amount of the dupe that already had a high attribute value.

I suggest the following to make the new system work better:

1. Attributes should be reworked or split into two things. There are Job specific attributes such as Farm/Operate/Cook/Build. Those attributes are tightly coupled to the specific job, but not useful for other jobs. The attribute system should reflect that somehow. However Athletics, Learning and possibly Digging (as far as I know it increases the mop speed or it did before), that are not tightly coupled to a job should still be dynamic to a degree, so the duplicants can increase them globally, perhaps with a lower learning cap than before (for example 15 instead of 25).

2. Rolling attributes isn't fun anymore. Just normalize the attributes for every dupe and let us just roll for Interests and Traits. Attribute rolling just gives the illusion of depth, but doesn't actually add fun gameplay and it creates all kinds of balance problems.

3. Groudskeepers definitely need some kind of bonus outside of the priority system. I feel like it should go in the direction of making other dupes happier when they seem them. Or the other way around: Tidy jobs could be more severe to the stress meter but Groundskeepers will be somewhat immune to that.

4. The Supply job feels awkward, because in order to build stuff you need to supply the materials. I can never opt dupes out of that job if they should be able to build, but this breaks the system because I don't want my builders to fuel coal generators and deoxydizers. This hard dependency was always a little bit of a problem and I think it can/should be fixed, to make the new system more smooth.