BETA 53 BETA 53: A JUNCTURE MOST UNNATURAL

For that research concern I usually click the little portrait and it fixes it right up... like the farming portrait in the office interface.

 

Is there a way to make workers force repair stuff because in my playthrough, my kitchen went into maintenance mode and no colonist went to do maintenance to the point that almost everyone starved! then i rebuilt the whole kitchen and now the problem of maintenance went to my ceramics workshop!

 

Minor thing - tried to remove a carpentry workbench but only one of the 5 in the workshop could be seen and thus selected Others impossible to choose.

 

Change their name to Joe Farmer or something.

 

I'm going to be a broken record here and saying this is why we need a crew of workers to do the upkeep...A Clockwork Janitorial/Maintenance Crew...all the other cool colonies have them....=P It would be such a time saver...

 

Or how about a function, like hauling or construction, that we could turn on/off by team.

 

So, I started right at the slope of a giant mountain.
The crew members who lived there became hermits, forever living in the shadows of... something black, and my supplies distant dreams on the ground.

 

That may work, too. Just something....I'd prefer the actual Maintenance building...that way less buttons to worry about...but still, something really has to change with the upkeep thing. I agree with upkeep...but the way it is, it feels like a chore. Bogs the game down from the more interesting stuff...like the creepies and the cultists...I really haven't played much lately because of the upkeep thing. It really took the fun away for me,

 

Maybe it's just the way I set things up, but upkeep isn't really a factor for me all that much anymore.
It only becomes an issue if some event makes my colonists run all over the place or something (I will name no names, hum hum) destroys my entire trunk stockpile, but generally during the course of a colony from start to like 70+ colonists I have very few if any workshop shutdowns, and when they do happen, they're taken care of fairly quickly (unless everyone is already dying/on fire).

The main effect of upkeep in my games is that it makes me constantly keep an eye on my wood/stone production and adjust accordingly if anything starts lagging behind. I don't know if "perform upkeep" is part of the normal workshop duties, but generally to be safe I have most workshop crews have "construction" enabled (I find that they will very very rarely prioritize other jobs over their workshop duties anyway). Maybe it helps that I have certain of the less busy workshops (like chemical works or barber) set to do construction and hauling only? Since the last couple versions of 52 upkeep hasn't really been the horror that people describe for my colonies, and in 53 I barely give it a thought except when I'm expanding and need to account for extra wood production.

The one bit of upkeep that is impacting my game are the higher tier master trunks, which, depending on wood/coal availability, can put a serious brake on colony expansion, but I see that as a logistical problem to be solved rather than a "onoes, game is bork" issue.
Another renewable wood source (for biomes that can't grow bamboo) would help quite a bit in the late game. I'm still a little puzled as to why naturalists can't plant trees, even if it were very slow - I don't seem to get much use out of naturalists.

 

@mcnostril - I'm in agreement on upkeep. I've begun to just factor it in. It generally adds a management wrinkle but not a worry. I also agree it slows expansion down. In light of the housing changes though, this works out just fine for me.

I'm 300% in agreement about the wood sources though. They replenish a wee bit slow for an ever growing colony. The need to make greater quality trunks and more of them is tough without a good starting amount of wood. What I do see though is the ability to turn other materials into trunks. A couple of high output mines and a ceramic shop can really help here.

Anyone else having a crash problem on placing a window in middle class housing?
Just got a very reproducible crash on doing so.

 

Upkeep isn't a factor for me either in terms of knowing what to do and how to make things relatively automated, but I still don't enjoy doing it at all. It's an extra step in every new game that kind of feels more like housework at this point.

Building other things is fun, because at least I have a sense of progressing toward finished products. With upkeep, it's just like... oh here we go again... build a bunch of these things so everything doesn't blow up eventually. It's not a pleasant gameplay loop.

Still keeping an open mind that it still has a few more passes left to make it a little less tiresome. Right now it's pretty much the only negative thing about the game for me.

 

I'm Actually curious how a hybrid system of the previous repair system and the current one would go over. Rather than things breaking on a schedule, modules going back to the individually broken based on usage scenario. But instead of requiring a random item they require the repair trunks to fix them. The immediate benefits to this are that (a) your entire workshop doesn't shut down if you are 1 trunk short. (b) if you don't use that ceramics kiln all that much you aren't paying repair costs. (c) it seems a lot more natural. things break more if you use them a lot. kitchen stuff is gonna be busted all the time compared to that one stone smelter you keep in case of emergency etc. With the current system, it makes less sense to have a lot of modules in your buildings, and use only one or two for all jobs. But to prevent the intense micromanagement that would create, I like to have 3 or 4 in a big building with a few set to always do one task (ie make glass), but those are only being utilized maybe 33% of the time.

I dunno, anyone have any other thoughts on how the repairs stuff could be more interesting? I admit right now it does feel like its a very constant mechanic in a game built around uncontrollable randomness/managed chaos.

 

One of my games had a major continuous showdown between the bandits and the fishmen. Obviously I murdered both of them. What I did notice though was that the armored bandits will drop metal plates, but only if the fishpeople nom on them first.

Maybe include an option to "forage" the corpses, since we can't just outright chop em up for long pork...

It also doesn't make sense that there's fishmen walking with a big ol tank of brass/copper on their heads and we can't use it... besides them as steaks.

Maybe have them drop scrap metal instead? Would be more balanced than steel plates, especially after they've been shot at or chopped up.

 

I'm still finding that the upkeep jobs are appearing in the jobs list but no colonists ever pick up the job... ending in demolishing and rebuilding. I have plenty of repair trunks being continuously built and have idle work crews, so its obviously not the way i'vde set up my colony...

I like some of the ideas above for a maintenance building, but as another idea, why doesn't the repair of a buildings modules fall to the work crew in the building itself, i.e. the carpenters crew fixes the carpenters workbenches rather than waiting for a crew to finish gathering or mining. As repairs are only required on modules that are in use, you will always have someone available to fix them, and make it so that upkeep is a job performed at the module before continuing with whatever work has been allocated to said module, that way as long as repair trunks are available your workbenches get repaired in a timely fashion without disrupting the entire colony..... also you could tie in overseer skills, so a more skilled overseer will have to perform maintenance less often... an additional reward for increasing skill levels, potentially tie in a research line that reduces the need for repair trunks or increases their production speed, something to strive for later in game.

 

This cultist truly is forward thinking! Although he might be getting ahead of himself. sorry

 

Sometimes a cultist can't be afraid to take risks and stick his neck out. not sorry.

 

It's not cut their hands off, is it?

 

I have been playing the experimental branch since Upkeep Trunks came in and I still don't like them. I can't really see the point of them, to be honest. Once upon a time things had to repaired using odd bits of wood or stone; now I have to craft those bits into trunks and it just seems like an unnecessary faff that takes up a whole workshop. Nor do I really understand why people doing upkeep grab a trunk, take it to a random bit of wilderness miles away, put it down, pick it up again and only then go to the bit they're supposed to be repairing; or why sometimes a workshop just breaks and can't be repaired (this last must be a bug I think.)

The problem is it's no fun; other stuff that needs to be continually churned out to keep the colony going (basically, food) has interesting wrinkles and decisions to be made all the time (shall I switch crops, recipes, etc?). But the trunks just lock up workshops and workers and go through raw resources like wood and bricks at a fearful rate. Especially wood: clay is a renewable resource, but there's no way to plant trees in Temperate climates, so at a certain point you'll be relying on traders for wood or everything is going to collapse.

 

Agreed....very well said.