Industrial simulation concept?

Haven't touch this game for quite some time, and to my shock, I see the direction is totally different.

Whatever happened to this concept?

https://www.gaslampgames.com/2012/09/25/an-industrial-logistics-simulation-for-everyone/

It's now a more settler survival with building crafting instead of a town builder...

 

I recently made a thread about this : https://community.gaslampgames.com/threads/what-is-the-status-on-dynamics.16657/

My understanding is they want to make sure the basic mechanisms of the game are solid before expanding it further.

Right now they need a solid game foundation and from there add all the mid-to-late game features such as factories, megaprojects etc.

 

Oh, so they moved the industrial part of the game to a higher level, now focusing on micromanaging the populace?

Shame. I wanted a steampunkish/lovecraftian city builder. Lethis didn't quite cut it

 

I have to say, with or without automatic factories, this game would be hard to become a city builder like Impressions games, Anno serie or even Banished. Because it need day-night cycle to imply the cosmic horror, and that will limit the time flow to a certain speed, otherwise the day-night cycle will be too fast and annoys everyone.

And that means the game will not be very fast paced, which is not good for building a large town in short time(short means no more than 3 hours).

 

So they went far away from the original concept. Shame

 

It's a great idea to go back to that blog post sometimes to keep in mind what many players (including myself) found appealing about this game concept in the first place. In particular, the importance of factories:

"Factories are central to the character of the game because they are a physical embodiment of technological change and social & economic restructuring [...] from a medieval artisanal mode of production (something like Dwarf Fortress) in which individual craft skill is celebrated to a properly industrial machine-of-machines mode of production, alienated workers and all, in which the size and sophistication of factories is most important."

Since just getting basic interactions and game mechanics to work properly is still ongoing and has taken a long time, it's not really clear how much Gaslamp's intentions have changed and how much simply hasn't been done yet. About the only explicit design change I can see is that building interiors can be seen and interacted with, as opposed to the black boxes originally conceived.

 

One thing that seems to have changed quite significantly in terms of the role they play is that of stockpiles.

Early concept ideas depicted something much closer to actual logistical lines between stockpiles, where you would have stockpile-styled loading bays for the production buildings, and then there would be hauling machinery that would ship goods between a few central stockpiles to the production buildings and then loading/unloading goods onto those workshop owned bays.

What we have (for now) is much more of a loose system driven entirely on colonist hauling logic and everything is done through generic stockpiles, where the player can attempt to try and create something 'sort of' similar to the kind of logistical chains initially suggested by trying to influence colonist hauling logic to do what is desired, but ultimately having no real control over what actually happens and what goods are pulled from where, and where the output ends up.

You could have a small stockpile right next to your carpentry workshops intended to hold a small store of goods from the workshop that collects raw resources and construction materials but that will get overlooked by a workgroup chopping trees and looking to bring back 50 units of raw wood if you still have a larger central stockpile closer to the chopping job that accepts anything that was intended to be a reserve/overflood stockpile for when the smaller localised stockpiles are full, which then means most of your raw resources for your workshop end up the furthest distance possible from the building itself.

Whilst at the same time, you can end up with some workshops dropping produced goods between two or more different workshops if you build your structures close together each with a localised stockpile as you have situations where half the workshop is closer to small stockpile A on one side, whilst the other half of the workshop is closer to small stockpile B on the other side.

For now at least, there's absolutely nothing the player can do about such things however. But it's certainly quite a divergence from the general idea presented back in the earlier design days.

 

Don't worry about the concept. It's still there, they just need to make sure all of the base stuff works. It's awesome thus far so I'm very optimistic!

 

It would be nice to get some statement from Gaslamp (perhaps in a future Wednesday blog post) revisiting the original concept and talking about what's actually changed conceptually versus what simply hasn't been implemented yet.

 

Definitely, I think this could really be done with a wide area of things with the game beyond just the logistic pipelines really as it's rather unclear what is still planned for the future and what parts of the design have evolved over time to become something entirely different.

 

I have to admit, I've been watching the same shift with some trepidation; I got onboard because I was so sold on the picture those early devblogs painted (massive complex factories, mechanized supply chains, and general Steampunky goodness), but the vision does seem to have slowly moved towards a smaller-scale simulation more reliant on micromanaging production and then letting the colonist AI do the rest.

 

What exactly is meant by 'dynamics' in this context? I see this word being thrown around a lot, but what does it mean in terms of game mechanics?

 

Odd as it may seem, I'm actually more interested in what it means visually.

I like how the game plays, and I thoroughly enjoy the design direction taken, but I REALLY miss the steampunk look. Right now it's charming colonial life, and that's all fine and dandy, but I wanted cogs, pipes, pumps, levers, gears, valves, vents, and also other words! With letters and syllables and stuff!

 

I think dynamics refers to what are often called conduits - pipes, power lines and so forth. In game terms AFAIK it would determine how power is transmitted (conveyed) from where it's generated or stored to where it's used. So you'd need to run a pipe from your steam factory to the carpentry shop so you could run a power saw, for example.

 

And thus all of the the Great Gaslamp Archives were toroughly Searched and Replaced

 

On that topic I played Factorio as per Tikigod's suggestion and thus the great Void in my gaming life was niceley filled with conveyor belts. This game is really interesting, although it ultimately fall short when you understand how to make good assembly lines. Although it's more freeform than infinifactory it falls in the same pitfall that there is often "one best way" to do things.

And I'll have to agree with you here. Just as in Dwarf Fortress, it's actually more satisfying to see little people milling around carrying items and making stuff rather than having everything automated (automation doesn't generate good emerging stories). Although i certainly want more clockwork things in the game, so that the game can live up to its name. At least allow us to have raise a clock tower somewhere.