Jobs Update Observations...

[FistfulOfZen]

Observations:

• Things that don't seem to be working right:
  • Builders are Digging, even when there are Building tasks and blocks being dug are not related to any Building project. Diggers don't prioritize building projects over miscellaneous digging, so Digging and Builders don't compliment each other.
  • Dupes assigned to Tidy will not actually pick up anything unless they are also assigned to Supplying (specifically, they will not pick up anything and "deliver it" to storage containers).
• Things that seem to be designed to be annoying:
  • Dupes still prefer negative status (water and other hostile environments) pathing, even when safe and dry routes are available.
  • Dupes still regularly strand themselves while Digging, because they will needlessly climb on top of Digging projects, rather than stand and dig from planned and built pathways.
  • The game is becoming needlessly complicated and, instead of being light hearted with "deceptive simplicity", is becoming actually laborious and a tad over complicated.

Jobs Update, overall, seems like a solid idea, just with an incomplete/imperfect (see above examples) implementation. Too much of the game's "difficulty" still depends on the Dupes being stupid, however, and players are punished for this rather than for their own mistakes. The heavy handedness of unhappiness and sickness has been lifted, but the design issues of the difficulty of getting the Dupes to do things useful in their environment still remains. I'd much rather have the heavy handed costs and be free of brain damaged of the Dupes, except if, for example, I knew that the Dupes were were specifically stupid (as in they had a negative Trait "Foolish" or "Foolhardy").

Also, a few ideas and nitpicks intended to improve quality of life and gameplay:

• The shuffling through Dupe creation is annoying. Can we please streamline Dupe creation?
  • Pick which Dupes you want (by name: ex Nisbet, Meep, etc.).
  • The game generates randomize positive and negative traits, possibly let player pick one, but each positive trait comes with specific negative traits...
  • All skills start at 0, and Dupes progress through jobs, or, alternatively, their skills depend on the Duplicant specifically.
• Make the survival aspect of the game both simpler but more rigorous?
  • Get this: Boiling water is neither complicated nor hard. The only challenge should be scale.
  • Polluted Dirt (Duplicant Waste) and Polluted Water should create Polluted Oxygen (serious bad), Fertilizer (basic and useful), and Dirt (basic and the whole "conservation of matter" science thing).
  • Some things, especially if they are simple, should not require research, for example: the whole recycling Polluted Dirt above, since humans have been doing it since time immemorial.
• Continuing on the "more rigorous" idea, food sciences is missing from the game... add it?
  • If a crop requires more to cultivate domestically than it does in the wild, then it wouldn't have been growing in the wild in the first place.
  • Skill (job) and science (research) should have almost as much to do with food quality as the food itself, though, of course, there are limits (meal lice will always be kind of gross, no matter how well it's garnished).
  • Slapping something into the ground might grow into something technically "edible", but making food safe and filling could (and should) require research.
  • Certain Fauna could be more numerous and necessary to deal with but also provide poor quality food (ex: Morbs).
• The game is ostensibly supposed to be "survive a hostile environment with a group of quirky cloned adventurers", right? If they are going to be civilized, could Duplicants prioritize cleaning built up (tiled) areas first?

Enjoying the game so far. Thanks for the read and the game.

-Fist-

[Kasuha]

Jobs update hit a wall in a sense. A wall of efficiency. By restricting duplicants to only do tasks related to their jobs (or to give them clear preference) they became less efficient at building the base. And the difference was significant, that's why the new priority system was rolled back.

I made an experiment. Started new map, built a jobs board, then prohibited all dupes doing anything except one who was allowed to dig.

As a Miner, he got 1% by digging six tiles. As Architect and Gofer, he got 1% by digging eight tiles. That means:

First, a duplicant will level up his mastery even by doing tasks that are unrelated to the job.

Second, a duplicant will get approximately 25% more exp by doing tasks related to his job.

Now, the question is: is it more efficient to force a duplicant to do tasks of his job because of that 25%? My answer is that in general case, no. Job-related tasks are usually small portion of total tasks. A duplicant that is picky about tasks he does will spend a lot more time traveling between tasks than he will spend working and gaining exp. So in general case, the best approach is to let all duplicants do anything and they will level up their jobs (and most importantly their stat points and masteries) one way or another.

What the game needs is not strict adherence to job's tasks. That's provably inefficient approach. What it needs is more of an adherence to a project. When you send some of your duplicants to build a new pathway and some machines, you want them to work on that and not go back to base to harvest plants or clean the outhouse. The expansion is one project, and the base maintenance is another and you should have some other duplicants to take care of that. As long as there's enough workforce in the base to take care of the base's chores, the expansion team should not bother with their problems even if there are some of their tasks undone. But we still want to be able to assign priorities for the base chores and the base maintenance to follow these priorities,  just the expansion team should not care of these tasks in the base although they may have pretty much the same tasks to do on their own project.

But how can that be done, I don't know.

 

[realdead_man]

1.   If the dupes were smarter, that would help SO much.  EXAMPLE: Not getting their self stranded, better path-finding, intelligent cleanup, almost "refusing" to work where they will die instantly, not entombing their self, when in danger (air) try to get to oxygen, etc

 

2. This touches on a suggestion I made and was jumped all over for.

 

Have priority set 1-5 or 1-10 or whatever, PLUS a hidden priority, last command is highest if their is a tie.   Example, two priority 5 task, the youngest has preference.

[Chowder]

9 hours ago, FistfulOfZen said:

• Continuing on the "more rigorous" idea, food sciences is missing from the game... add it?
  • If a crop requires more to cultivate domestically than it does in the wild, then it wouldn't have been growing in the wild in the first place.

Not true! In many cases a plant that's growing in the wild has adapted ways for its seeds to find their way to places where it will grow well, but are incredibly fiddly to grow domestically because that then requires replicating the circumstances the plant finds on its own in nature. If it ever seemed strange to you to refer to a plant as "domesticated," this is why. Domestication in the sense of plants is often a matter of making it grow in ways that are more beneficial to humans, rather than letting it do what it's going to do on its own.

So, with that in mind, may I suggest...domestication! I imagine it would be a higher-level specialty research. Here's how I'm envisioning it working; prior to domestication research, farming works largely how it does now; plants have specific requirements that must be met for them to grow properly, which can be fiddly, requiring specific atmospheric conditions, irrigation, what have you. After domestication, any plant (yes, including upside-down boys like pincha peppernut) will grow just fine with nothing but a planter box and a bit of fertilization, without such extravagant measures as keeping a room full of chlorine or chasing away the shinebugs to keep it dark. Upgrading to a farm tile or hydroponic farm tile and the increased maintenance this brings/allows will increase yield or quality; for example, more kcals per unit, or meal lice you could feed to a seasoned miner. Possibly you could even choose, when planting, which cultivar you'd prefer to grow.