Don't use jobs to gate off gameplay / buildings

[xenoborg]

For the love of god don't ruin this game by removing all choice from players. The already busy start every player faces has now got worse. I am instantly forced to create a jobs board before bathrooms, and there is zero choice as to what jobs I want my first 3 dups to have, one has to be a miner one has to be a research assistant and one has to be an art student.

I now have a start where only one of my 3 already slow digging dups can dig certain materials.

I am gimping myself out if I choose to play the game with fewer dups, as I miss out on crucial gameplay elements and or buildings for not having a certain job without spending an incredibly long time leveling up multiple jobs for each dup.

You don't need another way to gate off gameplay when research does exactly that and does it well, even thats getting bloated with every update don't make the experience any worse.

If you want to gate off diggable elements, just add a new research tree to upgrade duplicants digging guns job done, I don't need to make every single one of my dups a miner now to get them to do something.

Use the jobs properly, to allow players to boost the stats a player feels like they need or are missing at the time, not to tick off critera.

Get rid of learning, its too good with the passive boost and research could do with a flat timeframe for every duplicant that you can adjust as balance.

15 minutes in to my first occupation game and I already feel like I have lost all freedom in how I play the game and I know its going to get worse as the cycles grow.

[realdead_man]

Very well said

[goboking]

I don't like it either.  As you say, research already gated everything that needed to be gated.  I feel this system was either added to give more casual players a progression system akin to those we find in virtually every other game these days or to guide less creative players to specialize their dupes.  The problem is it forces those of us who already did so to specialize in ways we may not want.

[vovik]

Atleast now dupes are not "Duperfast", also dupes are "duperstrong", 1680 kg of weight carried per dupe O_o...

 

[Kasuha]

Well it's true that the duplicant printer could serve as a jobs board too or one could be pre-built in the starting cave but I don't think building it is such a big inconvenience and let's not forget the game's in development here, things are still rough and getting figured out.

4 hours ago, xenoborg said:

one has to be a miner one has to be a research assistant and one has to be an art student.

I don't think particularly these three are a good choice to start with. Why would you have a researcher if he doesn't have a table to work at yet? And art student is definitely not anything you have to sweat about - if you roll a good creativity duplicant, he can make decent art just after switching the job. And even beginner art makes change, putting your duplicant effort into getting masterpieces ASAP just holds you back in other important areas.

Maybe it's not the game but your choices what's causing you problems?

Of course the jobs system is an experiment, a work in progress like a lot of the game. I think it's actually decent at the moment, most people who have problems with it just expect it to work different way than it really works. The fact that your duplicants have to learn to do certain tasks makes sense, though, that's how things work in real life, too. Plus they get the ability just by choosing to start learning it which is rather convenient. If digging hard minerals is such an obstacle for you, perhaps you should try to start with three miners instead and only switch their jobs when they have something else important to do.

[ImpalerWrG]

My recommendation, Put all the advanced Jobs into the tech tree AS researched items,  you need to Research Tenured scientist before anyone anyone can be assigned to it.  This lets us pull back on the amount of labor that a Dup needs to master a Job and become eligible for a higher one because research is the primary gate.  This encourages more Job swapping to earn the permanent traits like harder rock mining, and all Jobs that need to be researched need to have these kind of permanent traits to make them worth doing at for a while, the traits are also earned at the point of Mastery of a Job, not on assignment to it so thier is not swap-in, get trait, swap-out exploit.  Naturally the traits that exist now should move one level lower in the Job tree so for example a Master apprentice (oxymoronic naming convention) Miner earns hard Rock mining rather then a tier 2 miner getting it at 0%

[xenoborg]

8 hours ago, Kasuha said:

Well it's true that the duplicant printer could serve as a jobs board too or one could be pre-built in the starting cave but I don't think building it is such a big inconvenience and let's not forget the game's in development here, things are still rough and getting figured out.

Its 400kg raw metal, its existance already puts behind my manual gen / battery / research table.

8 hours ago, Kasuha said:

I don't think particularly these three are a good choice to start with. Why would you have a researcher if he doesn't have a table to work at yet? And art student is definitely not anything you have to sweat about - if you roll a good creativity duplicant, he can make decent art just after switching the job. And even beginner art makes change, putting your duplicant effort into getting masterpieces ASAP just holds you back in other important areas.

It takes 5 minutes to get a research table up now I can't use a super computer without an arbritrary job title, now one of my dups cant dig properly, 10 minutes later art researched but I now can't create art without an arbritrary job title, now one of my dups cant dig properly. Do you see the pattern emerging here?

Stress is the only thing early game that can ruin you, decor is the thing that fixes that.

I shouldn't be forced to print duplicants just to be able to do something I have already spent time and materials researching, The game is asking me to specialise from the word go, which is exactly when you don't specialise because you hurt yourself.

I'm expected to have at least one dup for every job now, the game has chosen for me how I should be playing it and if I deviate I get punished.

9 hours ago, Kasuha said:

The fact that your duplicants have to learn to do certain tasks makes sense, though, that's how things work in real life, too.

They are printed from a machine, and they already have to "learn" to build certain things through research.....

[MatthewCline]

If you're going to have the dupes gain stats and traits through leveling up skills, at least make it so that they learn from experience without having to be assigned to the job.  It sucks that any work done before assigning a job is wasted as far as learning goes, as does any work done outside of that job.

[Rossum]

Also, it's a pain that a dupe's interests and actual skill levels don't automatically corolate when created.

Like, when first starting a game:

Any dupe with Mouth Breather, Bottomless Stomach, or Flatulence is automatically disqualified. It's better to have no dupe than to have one of those.

Flaws that render them unable to do certain jobs like Research, Digging, Art, Building, etc aren't bad when you have no intention of assigning that dupe to a job, but it's just dumb when a dupe has something like five or more points in Research only to find they are a Yokel that can't actually use it. I haven't really paid attention enough to see if you can get something like a Yokel with Research as their interest... but that would just be useless.

Point is, while I can sort of understand the desire to make specific jobs to specialize in things, it would be really helpful if the game actually acknowledge this strategy when assigning stats to a dupe.

When I'm starting a game or looking over new dupes ready to print, I would like to be able to just look over at what their interests are and be sure that the rest of their stats will make sense.

If they have an interest in Research, they should have at least one point in their Research skill and not be a Yokel.

If they have an interest in Cooking, they should have at least one point in Cooking and not be Gastrophobic.

 

If the game is telling me to specialize all my dupes from the very beginning, please for the love of God have the dupes already specialized when making me choose them. I don't want to have to keep sorting through dozens or hundreds of boring samey randomized skill dummies who all have weird phobias and bladder problems that I will instantly regret if I ever choose them. I want to look at a list, pick out some researchers, diggers, cooks, etc and know that they've already got their interests, skills, and flaws kind of set up for doing that job. If a dupe has a flaw, it should above all else not prevent them from doing the actual speialized job they are set up to do. I can take a digger who can't cook, or make a researcher who farts a lot, but I shouldn't run into people interested in art who never picked up a paint brush in their lives and have a flaw that makes them totally incapable of ever doing art stuff if they wanted to. If they can't do art stuff, they really shouldn't be telling me that they are interested in it.

[vovik]

On 24.02.2018 at 11:59 AM, xenoborg said:

It takes 5 minutes to get a research table up now I can't use a super computer without an arbritrary job title, now one of my dups cant dig properly, 10 minutes later art researched but I now can't create art without an arbritrary job title, now one of my dups cant dig properly. Do you see the pattern emerging here?..

Maybe jobs should be added onto jobs board when certain building is researched?

On 24.02.2018 at 11:59 AM, xenoborg said:

Stress is the only thing early game that can ruin you, decor is the thing that fixes that.

Cycle 100, no artworks, no stress response happened, stress at  7%, hmm.

[xenoborg]

1 hour ago, vovik said:

Cycle 100, no artworks, no stress response happened, stress at  7%, hmm.

So you spammed massage tables or haven't broken into any other biomes or haven't built anything of note?

Your point being?

[vovik]

No massage table, algae distillers running, searching for geyser, also rushing for oil biome to build puft chambers and seal shinebugs in one place so they dont wander and die anywhere in the colony. Using rooms for antistress bonus, sweeping all stuff, briar in bedrooms + bristle briar growing around printing pod for giant decor + printing pod being intersection of all roads in base(so dupes stay around massive decor most time when doing stuff in base) is the key to stress reduction.

1 hour ago, xenoborg said:

So you spammed massage tables or haven't broken into any other biomes or haven't built anything of note?

Your point being?

Actually i did opposite - dug some amount of other biomes, no massage tables, built quite some stuff around.

An yeah, passively captured most availiable hatches.

[Supraluminal]

I wonder if people having issues with stress are playing on higher difficulties. I've never had an issue with it in this game on the normal setting, and never had to make art in the early game. I've also never built a massage table.

Another I wonder about - I like to sweep pretty aggressively, and I know that debris has a sizeable decor penalty. Do other people leave debris lying around for a long time?

[ImpalerWrG]

I tried the Pessimistic setting on my 3rd game, made the Stress much higher and something I had to account for more.  Still no one has popped a response yet and I think I can keep it that way.

P.S.  Skills and Interests do not need to match, that's more random, more challenging and more realistic.  For example many folks have an interest in game designing, no no talent in it.

[Fledron]

I also think it's limiting people to using a lot of duplicants. In my opinion it was a nice idea to limit some things to duplicants with a particular job, but the digging thing is really annoying at the beginning. I'd also rather have a system that just makes digging faster with a duplicant that has the fitting job for a task, instead of blocking it completely. 

But I don't think it's that much limiting. My first three duplicants are not always the three you named, you can go with different jobs too. 

[KittenIsAGeek]

I don't see what the problem is.  I often build a small bit of starting area before I start research, and I always research food before getting to advanced research.  It takes several cycles to get the basics done, but it isn't too difficult.  My current priority system is:

• dig a bit
• build some out houses
• dig some more to open up the area
• set up a power system and oxygen production
• start food research
• dig out an area for beds and for some farms
• build farms once food research is done
• start advanced research

Usually by cycle 20 to 25 I have a sustainable base for anywhere from 4 to 6 dupes (depending on how many I chose to keep).  Its around this time that i start exploring or building things that require job settings, like power control stations.  Up to that point, however, jobs really don't matter much to me.

[vonVile]

I've always selected Artist, Cook, and Research as my 3 start Dupes, so this isn't a problem for me. The route to get to Laboratories and Painting has become much harder though. Have to get a Dupe to Miner to get to dig out Granite to make PW reservoir. By the time I get to both my Dupes are stressing out and relieving themselves all over the place from not cleaning Outhouses. The new priority system wasn't out yet, so it might be better with Outhouses. But once i get those two out of the way its clean sailing.

[Kazumiya]

Jobs and dupes stats need improvements, it's a fact. Yet I don't see how it could be improved in a less restricted way x) 

[Fledron]

Make digging hard materials without job really slow, but don't block it completely. Make dupes try to do artwork without job and they have a chance to ruin it and giving it zero decor. Make dupes without jobs perform slow or bad at things they would need a job for, but don't block it.

[Kazumiya]

I think some stats should not be here, asthletic and strength should be the same... Tinkering and Construction together too. Farming and Ranching together (I mean like In real life, farmers do have pets... ).

The rest is fine I guess....

[Fledron]

Not every body builder is athletic, and I don't learn breeding animals by planting crops. Tinkering and Construction is pretty similar, that's correct.