BETA 53B BETA 53B: FINALLY, AFTER TWO YEARS, A GAME OVER SCREEN

It seems that skill level is not affecting production speed, the overseer is master lvl but all the work is being done at the speed as if inept.

 

Seriously? hmm wonder what it looks like now...

Probably a game-changer for upkeep

 

I had to see the game over screen, so I starved a colony to death. Surprisingly hard to accomplish.
I've been itching to lose for so long.
Seems like the walls are closing in game is starting to come together.

 

RE: hunting
If I understand from the patch notes, Naturalists are the hunters. I still see hunting option on all work parties. Bug?

RE: naturalist assignments
I had mine set to mineral search and had a hard time figuring out how to assign him to an area. Better tooltip?

 

Crash. Mac version. See attached.

 

Yeah, I still wonder how it's possible to lose when you have enough housing. Even with mass deaths, your population will replenish fairly rapidly.

 

I feel like there should be an immigration modifier for recent events, which could be communicated in the immigration pop ups.

I don't think immigration should ever stop, but instead of like 7 labourers you get, say, 1 due to "the threat of the occult" or "there are tales that your colony is a charnel house" or something, and then said modifier goes back to normal over the course of a few disaster-free days, so a deathspin would be slightly harder to correct (although we might miss the part where a wave of immigration brings more people than you can feed which is another source of Fun).
Actually (dunno if this is actually the case), but it would be interesting if the current state of your colony had a slightly increased % chance of certain traits (so if you keep having disastrous occult events, you end up with a higher percentage of weird, morbid people).

 

@mcnostril , I like the idea of events bringing certain types of immigrants. Or likewise, impacting existing colonists.

 

Bandit raid, all colonists jumped in (got slaughtered) but troops just wandered around chatting. Did not move a muscle to help.

 

Maybe since they don't spend so much time on maintenance....they are bored?

 

I started 3 colonies today.
The first had a start location wedged between the map border and the sea. so I quickly discarded it (also, upon starting several of my colonists immediately died to an awoken horror).


The second had agood start, but the meteor event triggered after a day and my colonists would not do any work as they were galavanting around the map smacking creatures with sticks. I gavew up after a few days of this...

The third was a good start, and I got a little ways in before all my colonists decided to smack some horrors with sticks and shovels.
There was only one survivor...

He was very sad.
The only reason he survived was due having a ranged weapon, and some luck, since his two soldiers were also killed.

Alas, we wondered the deserted colony for almost an afternoon before more colonists showed up to help bury the others.
Life in the colonies is tough.


That said, I think the frequency of some of these events is a bit too high. There is pretty much one or two a day, which is fine when they are just little harmless things (sunny day, artist, etc), but the hazardous ones are gonna get annoying really fast at this rate.

Also, script error with the horrors

 

Good call on making naturalists the only hunters. I had a ravenous herd munching on my only cabbage field. No problem, I thought, after em' troops! Oh wait...

So after building a tiny office I sent my lone naturalist to exterminate them, but there were five and he got overwhelmed and killed. Now we actually have a reason to add workers to the naturalist office!

 

Is assigning a crew to a stockpile meant to make them prioritise hauling to that pile, or to just haul in general?

 

I've killed at least 20 beetles and none have yielded any lacquer. This makes it difficult to progress in a map with no lacquer trees and traders who don't seem to want to bring any.

Edit: Yeah, it's day 22 and traders have only come once. I think I built the depot sometime around day five. And beetles definitely don't yield lacquer anymore, but sometimes you'll get raw steak (of the red meat variety) for some reason.


Edit Two: The lampposts are lovely, but they sure seem out of place without roads.

 

Yeah, you're right about that. As I said, surprisingly hard to accomplish.
At first I ran a normal dauntless dare colony. People automatically gather berries and eat forbidden foods, and of course if someone does die then you get a replacement delivery of fresh meat. Starvation is not a threat to life, sometimes causes mood swings.
I had to cheese it with the single colonist loadout, but I was intent on seeing the game over screen. (Also, does anyone know if that's the only fail state?)

I'm sure the game over screen will re-frame the game in a way*, so I can't wait to see what's coming. Beta 53, 53a and 53b have really reinforced the skeleton of the game and I'm excited about the direction this seems to be taking.

Spoiler: apologies in advance

* especially to those who complain about difficulty and see the game as nothing more than a SIMS with lovecraftian elements that is set in the Victorian era

 

Also, I think the maximum possible laboratory points in my 53B games has stayed at 20, irrespective of skill level