Game Mechanics Suggestions

[Radowan]

Hi, your game is very good and deep, but after playing for 20+ hours I would like to post some suggestions how to improve the game mechanics:

1) PRIORITIES MENU - you should consider reworking this from Job-Duplicant relation into Errand-Duplicant. I know it would be much more settings, but it would make more sense. For instance, I want to set priorities for Mop, Sweep, Manual Power, Deliver rather than for Operate, Tidy and Supply. When you have two Engineers with high tinkering and different Athletics, you want to set the Engineer with the highest Athletics to perform Manual Power generation and now it is not possible.

2) PRODUCING QUEUE - this is probably the most painful settings in the whole game You can set 1 Product to be produced infinitely or 5 products to be produced one-time. So, if you want to produce 2 different products infinitely in one workshop you have no other choice than to check the building regularly and reset the settings manually. Suggestions:

(I.) Add option to make the whole queue recursive, not just one product

-OR-

(II.) Make it not a queue but just priorities (i.e. Can i produce No.1? If not, can I produce No.2? And so on...

-OR-

(III.) When the product is set to "resursive", it can be auto-skipped to the next priority product when insufficient resources (now when you have first priority product set to resursive and you have insufficient resources, the next priority products are ignored and the building is idle).

3) DUPLICANT SKILLS - this should be really more polished. There are skills just for 1 particular errand (Cooking, Creativity...) with no other impact on the game. On the other hand there are super "must-have" skills that influences almost everything across multiple errands (Athletics, Digging, Strength...) and even with a secondary impact (Athletics for move speed, Strength for carry capacity, Learning for faster skill increase...). I think, all the skills should be balanced having 1 secondary impact each and multiple purposes. Perhaps even reducing the number of skills would help to accomplish that.

Just my opinions and my suggestions - meaning no offense.

Anyway, good job, people and I am looking forward to the next updates!

[LivedOnce]

On 5/6/2018 at 1:49 PM, Radowan said:

 

2) PRODUCING QUEUE - this is probably the most painful settings in the whole game You can set 1 Product to be produced infinitely or 5 products to be produced one-time. So, if you want to produce 2 different products infinitely in one workshop you have no other choice than to check the building regularly and reset the settings manually. Suggestions:

(I.) Add option to make the whole queue recursive, not just one product

-OR-

(II.) Make it not a queue but just priorities (i.e. Can i produce No.1? If not, can I produce No.2? And so on...

-OR-

(III.) When the product is set to "resursive", it can be auto-skipped to the next priority product when insufficient resources (now when you have first priority product set to resursive and you have insufficient resources, the next priority products are ignored and the building is idle).

This one is so true. But quite frankly, only place it is useful in is a kitchen. It's just irritating to be forced to build station for each product just to keep it hands-free.

[TheExceed]

Many others have suggested the above one quite a few times. The game is about micromanagement. I do agree with it being something usefull to be added but I doubt it will ever be changed.

As for your third suggestion, digging doesn't really help all errands. Just saying  I think how the skills are now are just fine. They work well for duplicant mastery. I think only learning, strength, athletics are used all around. Strength not so much as I am fairly sure a 0 strength dupe would be able to supply majority of machines with one trip. (Don't quote me). Therefore strength is really only useful for tidying. With that being said, athletics is similar in that regard, however it does help dupes move around the base but some like the farmer, cook, artist, tinkerer, don't usually need to run far for their jobs/tasks. Yes, they can go far, but they usually don't. With that being sad, only learning affects all other skills as it helps them level up quicker. Each skill is used "for the most part", with one job/task.

[Smuch]

More than likely, I think the skill system will get upgraded/revamped in future updates, as new content get added.

I'm all for a better priorities system tho.

[Radowan]

On 7. 5. 2018 at 10:35 PM, TheExceed said:

Many others have suggested the above one quite a few times. The game is about micromanagement. I do agree with it being something usefull to be added but I doubt it will ever be changed.

As for your third suggestion, digging doesn't really help all errands. Just saying  I think how the skills are now are just fine. They work well for duplicant mastery. I think only learning, strength, athletics are used all around. Strength not so much as I am fairly sure a 0 strength dupe would be able to supply majority of machines with one trip. (Don't quote me). Therefore strength is really only useful for tidying. With that being said, athletics is similar in that regard, however it does help dupes move around the base but some like the farmer, cook, artist, tinkerer, don't usually need to run far for their jobs/tasks. Yes, they can go far, but they usually don't. With that being sad, only learning affects all other skills as it helps them level up quicker. Each skill is used "for the most part", with one job/task.

Not all errands, but more than one. Digging was used for actual Digging, Harvesting (perhaps not anymore) and Mopping. (Miner, Farmer, Groundkeeper). Strength is for Tidying but also means a carry capacity so it benefits all errands in need of transporting something.

Anyway, my suggestion 3 is not so important as long as the suggestion 1 is implemented.

[TheExceed]

12 hours ago, Radowan said:

Not all errands, but more than one. Digging was used for actual Digging, Harvesting (perhaps not anymore) and Mopping. (Miner, Farmer, Groundkeeper). Strength is for Tidying but also means a carry capacity so it benefits all errands in need of transporting something.

Anyway, my suggestion 3 is not so important as long as the suggestion 1 is implemented.

Digging might be mopping not sure on that one. But harvesting is now farming. As I said about strength, if I recall correctly most dupes with 0 strength can supply just about everything in 1 go. Atleast from what I noticed on my play throughs. So, strength really only benefits groundskeeper. But that's my opinion.

As for your first suggestion, it would be nice but also might clutter the UI more than they would like. In most cases, a duplicant can do multiple jobs fairly quickly like tidying (sweeping/mopping) so having them separate doesn't much sense.

What I would suggest to combat your specific example, would be a way to set specific duplicants to stations. Similar to massage table and/or med bed, etc