General feedback: Colony stability and game speed

[DerLoBo]

Hi,

I played about 30 hours overall, yet I started every 2 to 3 hours over. The first times actually to learn. However, there are two things about midgame that really stop me from continue playing a game (I then start over to try to get it work):

1) The colony becomes and some point waaay toooo squishy und unstable.

It feels a little bit like the first Anno games and just little mistakes start a chain reaction and the colony just dies without the chance to do something. Let me give you an example: I recently had a game where I was arround 15 dups. Then one the miners killed himself because he digged the ground beneath his feet and fell (by the way, the ai seems to be very poor sometimes...). Okay, just a little mistake I thought. But then one of the 2 chefs started mourning. The dude just sat there and kept crying and making a mess. A few minutes later I had a food shortage and somehow everyone became ill. The problem with high stress and illnesses that everything stops working: No more food is generated, the dups destroy half of the colonies buildings, repairing them is impossible because everyones moves a tile, sneezes, moves a tile... Another few minutes later all dupes but 3 (or so) died from starvation. It's like "I can't breath so I'm going to wreck all oxygen generating buildings". That makes mid (and late) game very annoying.

Another example: I managed to get a farm going for food supply (for the first time without the colony dying before, yaih). At some point the whole farm stopped growing because of atmosphere pressure. I didn't know what I was supposed to do, since there is no (easy/quick) way to get rid of gas (like a planets surface that has enough space so I could build a filter system or something). I tried to find some other food source but the 50k cal. where gone so quickly I couldn't do anything but watch everyone starve... I think the game mechanics are needlessly complicated sometimes. Plants requiring a sepcific atmosphere, okay, I understand that, but pressure? Especially without having a solution to that problem in the tec tree feels stupid.

2) Second thing is self-preservation. At some point the colony seems to do nothing but trying not to die. Further expansion is very difficult because all the stuff arround the main colony requires so much attention that there is no time left for exploring the map, building exploration-bases etc. I think all the jobs should be done a way faster or should be required to be done fewer times. Examples: Cooking a mush bar requires a lot of time. A colony of 15 dups requires 3 to 4 dups to do nothing but cooking mush bars (if there is no other food source). Algea oxygen generation: A colony with 20 dups requires too much algea at all and the oxygen generators have to refilled way too often. If I don't priorize the oxygen generators the dups won't even refill them since they have other things to do. Sometimes then all ****ters are clocked and everyone starts making messes all over the colony. At that point I tend to start over because the already described chain reaction starts. Sometimes I want to build the first water cycle (with a fresh water reservoir, showers, toilets, sinks, ... polluted water resevoir, filter system etc) and stare for like 10 minutes at the screen because it takes hecking ages, even a triple speed.

I hope you get what I mean. I really really really enjoy the early game since to can see progress, things start to grow. Because little mistakes are enough to kill the whole colony it feels further progress is somewhen impossible. I never reached late game so far because my colonies keep dying or getting stuck. Keep on the good work!

[Oozinator]

3 hours ago, DerLoBo said:

Hi,

....

When you have 300 hours on the clock, most of that stuff will be obsolete. Read the forum, most topics are asked a dazillion times

[Kabrute]

First I will suggest you not accept any destructive dupes at all ever if you are going to have stress troubles.  After 800 hours in game I still don't accept destructive dupes unless I am A) Playing in debug and just don't care, B) Doing a challenge, C) playing a No Stress Reactions world.
I also avoid flatulent narcoleptic and loud sleeper.  For exploring don't worry so much.  Get a very specific selecting of things researched and exploration will become easy enough.  Firstly don't take on more than 10 dupes till you have ALL research done and are moving beyond start biome ready for rest of game.  You need a garden of 18 mealwood plants and a musher, plus a garden of bristles.  Setting them all up in planter boxes is fine, I like to do 2 rows of 9 with mealwood and then start installing bristle garden above and below.  Play around with light settings and build each bristle garden around 1 light source, you will see what I mean.  You need the light to be on the bottom block of the plant so the spot just above the planter has to have the light.  Use everything you can to your advantage at every bend and twist.

[Oozinator]

38 minutes ago, Kabrute said:

I also avoid flatulent narcoleptic and loud sleeper.

Exploit!

[vovik]

narcoleptic = no stress response in AGES. Sore back on narco is meh,  totally enough price hard-to-stress-response dupe, just dont assign to responive work like cooking.

On 13.02.2018 at 2:45 PM, Kabrute said:

I also avoid flatulent narcoleptic and loud sleeper.

I avoid binge eaters because... scaaary of my food stuff, even tho i dont get stress responses at all, destructive is avoid too, since REPAIR IS BROKEN AS FK - repair voids material to sweet valhalla of nothingness.