Quality of Life Additions.

[Megouski]

I highly enjoy this game and games like it. ONI does it in a way that I enjoy most. 

However there are a few things that get in the way of actually enjoying the game itself, some major and long overdue, some minor (and most of the forum is filled with the minor changes and they are great to have). In my opinion the long overdue changes/additions need to be added at priority 9. They *directly* effect the quality of the game in a positive way and let the player play the game easier.

Currently I see them as three major things in order of priority

1. Blueprints 

This is present in debug mode to a degree, so bringing this over to normal play should not take as much effort were it not. This needs a normal play version (Other threads touched on this) and when placed will add a ghost of whatever blueprint you created. Be it a setup of several machines all hooked up with wire, pipe, blocks of certain type and material etc. at priority 0. This is a major quality of life with no drawback. This purely reduces tedium and does not effect game difficulty or anything else. Please add this soon. 

2. Frequently Accessed Items

I use maybe 10 blocks for 90% of what I do in the game. These blocks should show up in order of frequency accessed in a row above the current lower left row of block selection. This allows visible and easy click selection of blocks we use most. If I click the block once it should select the block and whatever material used last, as well as open a selection if I wish to change that material. This also purely reduces tedium and doesn't touch game difficulty. 

3. Block-Picking

What this means, is say I bound this to my middle-mouse button. Now say I moused over a common building block like a TIle made of Sandstone and click the middle mouse button (or whatever you bound the function to). What would happen is simple and highly useful: If you had sandstone, and you had the ability to create the block clicked, your mouse would now have Build Tile Sandstone selected and ready to make more. Middle-click a battery (and you have it researched)? Now you can create more batteries without having to go through menus and select it manually. Just click what you want to build. Anything you click that is build-able and you have researched would be quickly available.

Edit: This also exists in debug mode as 'sample'. In normal game one would only be able to 'sample' objects that can be built by an active duplicant.

 

The less your user needs to navigate the UI and menus the better. Please take this UI philosophy to heart. Thank you so much for this game!!!

 

[Lazy-Anemic]

I'm also requesting that it be possible to track specific resources in the report menu like how calorie generation is also tracked.

[Megouski]

I am hoping they implement all of these this summer. I am weary to create large things outside of sandbox mode simply because it is tedious to actually build rather than the difficulty of the game itself.

[BlueLance]

11 hours ago, Megouski said:

I am hoping they implement all of these this summer. I am weary to create large things outside of sandbox mode simply because it is tedious to actually build rather than the difficulty of the game itself.

I understand what you mean, but I purposefully build my systems to be a bit bigger so I can fit dupe/ladder access into it all. I just gave them a massive tonne of build orders in a single area for my cool steam vent system and they will build it unrestricted because of how I designed the build. 

Even if we had a blueprint option (I hope we do, we really need it) some designs would still be manually executed, for example any area where you have two wall thick sections, with how dupes behave you will get one wall built, the other wall will be inaccessible and a dupe will be stuck behind it.

[Megouski]

12 hours ago, BlueLance said:

I understand what you mean, but I purposefully build my systems to be a bit bigger so I can fit dupe/ladder access into it all. I just gave them a massive tonne of build orders in a single area for my cool steam vent system and they will build it unrestricted because of how I designed the build. 

Even if we had a blueprint option (I hope we do, we really need it) some designs would still be manually executed, for example any area where you have two wall thick sections, with how dupes behave you will get one wall built, the other wall will be inaccessible and a dupe will be stuck behind it.

Perhaps blueprints could be an unlock-able feature via either research or profession and things added to the AI upon unlock to make dupe building more intelligent so things like you're describing (i know it all too well too) happen less. It should not be that difficult to implement on at least a rudimentary scale. 'If block 1 is build will this remove access to the ability to build block 2? then execute block 2 first, else if this removed access to building block 3 etc etc'. Sort of a batch with sub-priorities build in so the job is fulfilled without tedious micromanagement. 

I do think smarter dupes should come at some sort of cost/investment though, thats why I think research or something, like a formula incorporating construction/learning skills and engineering/architect jobs should play a role in the intelligence of how they operate. Hell, this could go further and start giving way to dupe foremans and managers to help dynamically prioritize problems before they become problems! Dont get me started

 

[Megouski]

Does anyone know if there are official responses anywhere to anything I said above? 

 

It would not take much effort to have someone go through this forum gathering suggestion, (esp ones like this that the game is in dire need of before the leave beta) and letting us kow they are talking to the devs. That... thats why you made this forum right?

[Kabrute]

Klei official stance is to make no definitive statements because and I quote"Developer responses tend to end all conversation on a topic"
if your ideas are great they will be repeated on the forum enough that they get added in.
the main thing I can thing of that stands out on this are in-pipe sensors.

main example even....

[BlueLance]

The thing is i worry that if dupes had to do all that math and calculation that a blueprint for a large build would take up a lot of cpu, and for builds like mine which are accessible the cpu loss would be pointless. 

They will tweak the dupe AI though, I highly doubt they would leave it as is.

[Megouski]

On 7/10/2018 at 2:51 AM, Kabrute said:

Klei official stance is to make no definitive statements because and I quote"Developer responses tend to end all conversation on a topic"
if your ideas are great they will be repeated on the forum enough that they get added in.
the main thing I can thing of that stands out on this are in-pipe sensors.

main example even....

A lot of people dont even know what they are missing. I understand your point though. However in-pipe sensorce is a game enhancement (a  nice one), my suggestions are required pieces to what make a game like this go from good to great. 

 

Imagine Factorio without blueprints. The playerbase would be a fraction of what it is. Im not asking for someone to say "we are doing this, we arnt doing this", im more wondering why there is almost no communication? A simple "acknowledged" would be great from them.