BETA 55: ONWARD! FOR QUEEN AND EMPIRE

The cursed plague again! That's unpleasant, hope everyone feels better soon.

 

Hooray! I guess I'm abandoning my 54C playthrough one episode in. That's fine.

 

We can't zoom out all the way anymore. Thought I was going crazy at first.

 

Okay, that is... going to take some getting used to. The positive thing is that it forces us to be more intimate with our colonists, but man does it feel weird right now.


Edit:
Also, as our colonies grow it will become more difficult to get a nice overview. It forces you to scroll around a lot more when clicking on multiple workshops. And no more screenshots of our big colonies.

Edit 2:
Send help. I can't stop uselessly spinning my mousewheel.

 

Just gave it a fast try. I too am missing the scroll distance a little, mostly I miss being able to hide the name tags at a distance to get an overview.

I found a fun little problem though. This time I decided to start my colony not right in the center of the start location (last time supply drops blew up all my stuff when they landed on the stockpile). Now my colonists are unable to chop down some trees because of the 'flee towards civilization' trigger. every time they get close, they flee, then they come right back and try again. over and over and over. Save game attached.

 

Not to belabor the point, but I'm starting to feel a little queasy from having to scroll around so much at such a zoomed in level. This has never happened before, and I have over 700 hours logged. It's actually making me feel uncomfortable.

Plus, one of the things that made this game stand out for me at the start was the ability to zoom so high and low. How many recent colony builders let you do that? It was a really impressive feature!

I always try to find the positive side, but this one is hard to swallow. Please reconsider this decision.
I'm sure the visual noise problem doesn't have a simple solution -- this just seems like cutting off an appendage to stop a mild rash.

 

Would it help the visual noise issue at longer zoom levels to just remove all the icons after a certain distance? much like you did with name tags, progress bars, and thought bubbles? Possibly force the buildings to display roofs at extreme distances if that helps performance/drawing issues etc.
Personally I would like a way to not show the unused workbench and missing module icons when I am not actively managing the colony. I actually really liked that about the previous zoom system.

 

-2000 for the lack of zoomed out. Uggg. Please return it, feel like Unforked did ...

 

Notes from the previus build that I think are still there: I noticed that windows actually occupy space. What I mean, is that I though they were much like carpets, they occupay module space, but, their square of module space would be walkable, but this is not the case. I found this out looking to the strange path finding of an overseer trying to build a gabion line between two windows. He just run around in all places, leaving the timber around and so on, never getting near to the gabion. At the same time I noticed that some windows were never built on a lower class house. Windows that were one square away from another building, and had two other windows next to them ( see picture to understand, I'm not good at this kind of descriptions -.-'). Initially I cancelled the costruction of the gabion, and here I found that cancelling a job from the job list, doesn't seem to cancel the job but to prevent people from doing it: the gabion spectre is still there and a "disasseble module" order i cancelled left it's "pop up" warning on the screen (the little warning bubble over the module). I resolved the gabion problem disassembling a window: readily the overseer built the gabion without going around for the colony dropping timbers as soon as his shift ends. I don't know if what your position is regarding this two problems, but at least make the "windows-occupy-space" a more evident thing...

 

Well, I am home and it's the weekend! Time for my playthrough stream of conciousness, I will write dow
Ln anything I observe/see/do in no particular order. This time, I will BOLD bugs I find to make them obvious. Explanation point before lines that I personally find important.

• More zoomed in! This wouldn't be as annoying if the minimap was more detailed, or you could click to make the minimap bigger or something.
• Mousing over is instant! I like it. It can be a bit abrupt when moving your mouse around, maybe the box in the lower right should stick around so it doesn't flash in and out like that? Might just be me though.
• The loadout I chose said I get 5 laborers (Something about industrious?) but I only have 2
• When you try to create multiple buildings at once, it doesn't let you, but they still show up as blueprints when you place modules
• ! I do like that blueprint OK buttons are now placed in game! However, they don't let you place modules before pressing OK for some reason.
• ! The blueprint OK GUI should look different, with rounded corners like everything else placed in the game area, to show it's not a normal GUI thing.
• It's now more obvious when you have it on 2x speed!
• ! You still can't remove blueprint squares when you missclick. Right click and drag to remove would be amazing.
• I am getting some random jittering, weirdly enough. Went away after a few minutes.
• Naturalists office's cost Brick? So they are tier 2? Yet mines are tier 1 placement, so you can place mines before you can get a naturalist office? Hmm. Means that you will be placing mines before you get what ores you have there...
• Minimap isn't rotated to match the player view. Kind of annoying.
• Flatten terrain works awesomely holy shit
• I like how stuff is highlighted when you have a stamp selected, but it needs to be slightly more obvious. Making it outline itself a little bit would help a ton.
• Tea time needs to be more obvious, it always throws me off. Have text at the top or something?
• ! The building blueprint is 3d, but it's not obvious it is and looks off because of it. The sides of the 3d blueprint object needs to be a different color to make it clear.
• Removing foragables one at a time is annoying, I wish there was a way to set the clear terrain stamp to do it.
• Why don't windows improve building quality? At least the first two should give +1 or something, they seem pointless. Maybe once you add lighting effects on moods they will have a purpose again.
• Loading bay doors have no purpose. They can be replaced by two normal doors, and they don't give any bonus for being built. Are vehicles planned? Because if they aren't loading bay doors should be re-purposed somehow.
• Still need a "Build needed modules" Option badly. Or at least some menu showing you what you need to build to finish. Or even better, both.
• Bed count still doesn't match what you get from the building. Makes it annoying.
• Improvised muskets! I like.it. Where are normal muskets? Can we have a changed icon for the improvised version?
• Some visual information on how large a stack is would be great. You could even cheat and have it work like baskets or whatever, just have a taller basket and the item sticking out the top.
• ! Still no zoom to workshop button for farmers!
• The kitchen needs to tell you the quality of the food you are building somehow.
• In fact, it may be better to simplify the kitchen to use a system like "Brew basic drink", so you can just Cook Laborer Food, Cook Overseer Food, etc, for simple recipes, and it will automatically choose the ingredients. Maybe. I dunno, might be useful.
• Augh it would be really nice to have a "Increase Priority button in the jobs menu. Tropico had a cool system where you could set a single job to have increased priority and get bonuses to finishing it, maybe something similar could be implemented here?
• If you have no walls showing it's impossible to tell if a building has been built. Maybe keep it in blueprint mode until it's built? Would also let you place modules in it and make the whole system clearer.
• Augh, defensive walls are still not working. I assume that soldiers can still shoot through anything then.
• You can't really open the workcrew for a laborer easily. There needs to be a button to do that.

Will continue in next post!

 

I just thought the exact same thing today while I was playing O_O Windows have some benefit in houses, and lab since they are needed for some building benefits, but for everything else they are only up to the player. The same goes for every decor module produced in the metalworks (with the exeption of the radiator). Piper, vents, lamps,... they don't have any practical use. Maybe the lamps, but I'm not sure since I never made one. And I'm a player that invests a lot on keeping the buildings visually interesting.

The work list has a lot of problems, and it's really useful. As I metiontioned earlier, there isn't a perfect match between jobs on the list, and jobs to be done, and it's even more evident if you decide to destroy a building, noticed that "wait, I still need things from this one!", cancel the demolish order, and, after that, decide to scrap the building again*. Well, you can't destroy that building anymore: the building is not in "TO BE DESTROYED" mode, and trying to queue another "dismantel building" doesn't work, and it doesn't appear a job in the job-list.


*(it makes even more sense if you're trying to jump to the farm reaserch for bamboos and you don't have either a lot of wood, and overseers, so you often build a workshop, onyl to produce a few needed items and then nedd to use the work capacity for comething else)

 

• Manual survey button for naturalist doesn't work. I keep trying to click near my base and it doesn't let me.
• Further studies show that if you select an already existing survey beacon it works (?) I thought the point was to survey a spot.
• Bandits may be too weak now, I would suggest increasing their strength based on the size of the colony. Maybe make armored bandits really terrifying, and early bandit attacks aren't armored?
• The fact that the tooltip recommends removing the dark stone block with the clear terrain command amuses me to no end.
• I don't think the "Found bandit camp" alert is working as intended
• A naturalist can shoot an animal then never butcher it because it's a different job, like if they need to sleep.
• I can't tell my military to rally on a slope for some reason?
• Oh hey dissect and butcher have been combined for fishpeople! Nice! I like that. Now, question is: Can you still get fishpeople organ buckets?
• Colonists run from things based on how close it is, not if it's in their vision. Colonists walking around at night will suddenly run away from the darkness.
• Its funny, normal speed now seems like slow motion. I don't think I ever play on normal speed. Would it be possible to get rid of normal speed, and just have everything move faster? Maybe?
• Definently not as much action, that needs to be tweaked. Overall, very good!

 

Noooo! I play near exclusively on normal speed!

 

I think this one shows the case of stuttering: See ingame console performance with frame time over 90 ms and also the MISC tab stopping intermediately when the colonists stop...