I have trouble understanding how housing quality affect colonists' lives. I build a big bunkhouse with 8 practical beds for overseers, so the building had -7 quality, and yet the memories of my overseers were all "spent the night lavishly" as if housing quality didn't have any impact. Also something i noticed since a few alphas is that ever since housing increase the limit of colonists, i never have room for the first 9 colonists or so if i build reasonably sized housing. Since the game more or less prompts you to build reasonably sized houses (2 beds 2 windows, 2 tables), that's what i naturally tend to build, but if you keep making houses with 2 beds eventually you'll get way more overseers than you have beds for them, especially since the starting 7 overseers have no beds. So you're basically forced to make 4+ beds houses if you want to eventually break even in terms of housing and/or never add any improvement that could increase your overseer count with is a bit counter intuitive.
For what it is worth, this is precisely why I'm not keen on the new immigration system. You have to build large houses to stop bedless-ness (which to a certain extent works against the intended design principle) and the system can be counter-intuitive as a result of building houses potentially making bedless-ness *worse*. This said, I don't know what an alternative solution would be to avoid giant-bunkhouse syndrome (which I feel is a worth cause to defeat). The best thing I could think of was dividing quality and crowding. At the moment, beds etc. reduce quality while decor increase it on the same scale. As a result, no matter how many beds you put in a house, it is always possible to mitigate the effect with more decor modules (and it's actually more efficient overall, I think, to build giant bunkhouses and maximise quality than to have multiple small houses). However, if beds caused a negative modifier which *cannot* be offset by decor modules, while decor modules give a bonus on a different track, then giant bunkhouses will always carry with them a problem because the large amount of beds will always cause a penalty even if there are loads of decor modules buffing something else. E.g. Decor modules could increase happiness (which is basically the case now) while beds could increase anger (which I think is currently affected by the overarching "colony crowding" factor anyway, so would be thematically consistent with that). Actually, you wouldn't even need to change the system that much - quality could still be a factor which is negatively affected by beds and positively affected by decor, but there could be an additional anger penalty caused by beds which is never offset (other than by building less crowded houses). This system would make both building multiple small houses or few large houses a viable strategy - smaller houses are rewarded with less angry colonists while larger houses are cheaper and more efficient to construct and stock. (This system would also work well with workshops/offices, creating a reason to build multiple smaller workshops rather than single large workshops) (Um, sorry, got carried away there)
On a slightly different note, I really start to get tired of building houses after pop 50 or so, even fully furnished ones for max bonuses. Monotony starts to set in.
I have been barking about the immigration system for a while, I hate it with a passion. It should be number of beds then the quality can still affect the colonists in the exact same way it does now. I have heard that it is to prevent people from running up colonists too fast, but consider a lot of people just build tiny buildings with nothing inside of them to get more colonists with this system, so this one has more flaw than the bed count system would. I build 4 bed homes for overseers and 4 or 5 for laborers. It works out by the time I get to 16-20 overseers. I hope they make it the number of beds for 1.0 I have a feeling this will be a huge topic of discussion upon release with people who are buying the game, but maybe I am wrong. Having number of beds be the deciding factor would allow you to build buildings of various sizes to fit in areas that have a hill or massive boulder or just terrain you can not flatten but need to utilize. As it is now I have to build 5x7 or 5x9 buildings (and 6x7 and 6x9 are probably needed with the most recent update with rugs losing some stats) just to be able to have the beds used, or you can build small rooms with nothing but beds and the quality is crap.
Kamis, I guess to help you possibly, just put décor in the homes, leave room for rugs wall shrings laundry lines clay pots whatever you want to put inside, get the quality to +6 (have 5 more points from décor than number of beds in a building) rugs are the only thing worth 2 points, so in an 8 bed home you need 13 clay pots or 6 rugs and 1 clay pot or whatever you want to do) 8 bed homes are too big to furnish with décor probably, just go to a 5x7 or 5x9 and put the beds with a gap along one of the long walls a door in the middle of the other wall a couple rugs in the corners a cabinet between the beds and a couple of laundry lines on each side of the door. That is how I do it right now to make it work with the current system. Also, I never put the two table and chair sets in the overseer homes, thus giving my homes 3/4 cap, thus once I have 20 overseers I have enough beds roughly.
You can also run the approach of small houses to increase population cap (e.g 3x3 labourer house with two windows) and big bunk houses for sleeping, such as a 10x9 labourer bunk house holding 16 cots at maximum quality A similar design can be used for overseer houses, i currently do 10x9 overseer buildings with 12 beds each
The 'official' explanations for the change were to: 1) tie immigration more obviously to economic output; and 2) to stop players building giant bunkhouses. See: https://www.gaslampgames.com/2016/07/13/popping-the-real-estate-bubble/ The current system doesn't really address point (1): since you had to build houses to support new colonists anyway, there was still a clear economic cost - all the new system does is allow you to accelerate the rate of immigration if you want (and given that insufficient food/beds can be a problem, at least in the early game, there doesn't seem to be much incentive for this until you have enough colonists anyway; an expanding population is a problem as well as a boon). The current system does - though see below - address point (2). Personally, I feel that is a good thing: building giant bunkhouses is more efficient both in terms of initial cost and in terms of subsequent development. E.g. compare two situations: 1 house with 12 beds requires 12+6 = 18 total decor bonuses for max quality; while 2 houses with 6 beds each requires (6+6)x2 = 24 decor bonuses for max quality. That said, as has been highlighted, it is possible to exploit the system by building empty shacks and then cramming everyone in a giant bunkhouse anyway. Given this, there's a case for saying that using number of beds as the population cap instead would be better, since it's functionally the same as this exploit without immersion-breaking empty shacks. But it still doesn't solve the problem of giant bunkhouses - it would still be better to build a single giant house than multiple little houses. It's why I like the idea of adding an intractable penalty for crowded housing. It provides an incentive to build smaller houses while allowing larger houses if you want them; it also has no exploits I can see like the current system. You could then use number of beds as the population cap - I'd prefer other solutions but that does keep the spirit of the current immigration system and is easy to implement compared with anything else - but alone I don't think using beds as the cap works much better than the current system.
I have no issues increasing the quality of housing, the issue is that it is seemingly completely pointless. I didn't notice any difference in memories/happiness/effectiveness of colonists between a -6 quality house and a +2 or more quality house. even sleeping in a 8 bed middle class house with -7 quality, my overseers were as much happy as when they where sleeping in a 6 bed +2 quality house.
Well as is, currently overseers with Pioneering Spirit (and all your starting ones have this trait) will automatically get max sleepQoL rating if the have a bed. Period. Materialistic people need quality 5,6. Everyone else maxes out with a bed and quality 3...
I kind of like the housing system. It lets you tell the game just what sort of leader you are: will you provide for your colonists with every reasonable amenity? Will you pack them in like tuna fish? Furthermore, "neighborhoods" look real neat once you get enough of them in Proper Order. I would still like the ability to copy templates from house to house, though.
Point 2 could EASILY be addressed if colonist went into despair for being crammed into houses like sardines. I think it would be infinitely better if it was number of beds, and if people want to build giant bunk houses then they will have colonists in despair for being in an over crowded house. Lets say colonists prefer 2 bed homes, and as it goes up the QoL goes down. This would have prevented that issue and made a lot more sense. And point one, I don't see how that is really even an issue. Since resources are abundant in the early going, and a giant bunk house uses extra resources anyway. That point seems extremely irrelevant. No matter how many beds you are trying to build, the housing is going to cost about the same whether you do 20 beds in one house or several houses for 20 beds. So having the number of beds tied to economic output would be essentially the same either way (barring people are not literally just building small houses and filling them with beds and having no floor space- this however would cause despair and boom the player stops doing it) If there is one thing I feel like is done wrong in this game, it is the housing. I have no genuine complaints about anything outside of the housing, wishes and hopes, sure, but the housing thing is genuinely a flaw to me that would make a lot more sense if the number of beds depicted the population cap.
Well, that was my point exactly. I suggested increasing anger instead only because colony overcrowding is currently represented as increasing anger. But despair works just as well. Once that's in place, then I agree that beds would be a sensible way to cap population. If I object to that idea it is only because - being honest - I don't like the idea of a population cap at all. I'd much rather that immigration was instead an organic part of the simulation or tied to events, making colonist losses/gains feel more significant since they would wouldn't be automatically replaced when they die.
It works pretty well to make "4-bed +4cap" middle class houses. The main reason to make one really large one like a "18-bed +4cap" house is because: Starting 7 overseers Spamming rare paintings (probably cheaper to just make houses though, buying these is annoying) Using middle class houses as walls? Maybe some people make a lot of empty middle class houses (works, I guess?) I myself just use a small "2-bed +4cap" for extra cap, so it's paired with one or two really large houses. Doing this vs a 4b4c house doesn't save you anything, as all your houses would probably be pushed to +6 Quality anyway so... For lower-class it's a bit different I guess, you can quickly make a 4x3 bunkhouse and use windows+cots (to get +4 cap) but for them you can just ignore beds in general. I myself just had 3x3 bunkhouse+windows (for +3 cap) and when I had gotten really ramped up I simply added 3 decor pieces to get it to +4 quality (for +4 cap) and ignored cots. Having your citizens disperse about to sleep is actually pretty bad as it potentially puts them at the "border" when people attack... come to think of it, using your laborers in that way isn't too bad of an idea...
