Some Feedback (X-post from Steam Forums)

Hey guys,

The devs are active on these forums so I thought I'd throw my figurative hat into the ring here and lay down some sweet feedback across a few different points.

1.) I really like the context menu idea. It keeps the UI less cluttered and it is smooth to use. That being said the UI isn't very friendly to work with. I'd like to be able to drag, resize, and work with panels how I please. So if I want to pin my workcrew panel so that it is up all the time while only take up a small portion of my screen I can do that. Think like the windows in Banished where I can see what everyone is (supposed to be) doing all in a panel. So the UI needs a little tweaking to make it more efficient, because we are a government official and all we care about is the efficiency.

2.) I like that the workers do their own things, have their own personalities, and are something to get invested in. That being said I hate the constant pop-ups. They're too large and at time fill the screen to a claustrophobic point. There has to be a better way (or maybe there is and I haven't found it) to display/find this information. It's good to know and the iconography is important, but maybe make it like a log - again similar to the log in Banished. Pretty much what I am saying is that Banished has an excellent UI and it makes for good gameplay, so borrow some ideas from that guy.

3.) Feedback and information concerning jobs being worked on and jobs being accomplished. I feel like information can be a little obscure in general. I would like more feedback to know that work is getting done. Right now it feels like my workers don't really accomplish much even though they are working . I went from 17 population to 29 population and I haven't really seen a marked increase in productivity which leads to...

4.) Job priority and as a Dwarf Fortress player this is something that really irks me. My dwarves are pretty stupid, I mean McUrists all around the world will agree, but they get their jobs done. I constructed a low class home as my first building and set my laborers to building bed modules in it. Fast forward 40 minutes and the beds still aren't completed but other things built much later are. Beds are important. It should be a first in, first out job priority system with the option to manually change the assignment of jobs.

5.) I both like and dislike the worker crew idea, but leaning more towards dislike to be honest. What I like about it is the fact that it organizes my minions, but what I dislike about it is pretty much everything else. I'd rather be able to go into a baker for instance and add individuals to that workshop. The number of workers could be decided by the size or number of modules in the building. Maybe maintian workcrews in a way where I can group my workers together and turn off individual labors and assign them to certain workshops. Say I have Bronzefist Workcrew and I turn everything off but Workshop duty, then I can go in and assign each individual to workshops separately through a drop down list or something similar. Next I can have Teapoppy's workcrew assigned to only haul so that the goods get moved from the workshop to the stockpile.

6.) Farms are too tiny. I am not sure what the decision was behind the farm limit, but I don't like it. The colony is obviously an agrarian society and therefore relies on sizable farms - not multiple tiny farms. That is very inefficient.

7.) I've enjoyed the game so far, but I think it still has a long way to go to become something grand. I know you guys play video games, and I suggest taking a look at the competition and getting some good ideas. Rimworld, Banished, Dwarf Fortress, Prison Architect, Spacebase DF-9 (so you know what not to do), Startopia, the City Builder Series by Sierra, and I can't think of more off the top of my head.

8.) Add modding support. Modding increases the lifespan of a game twenty-fold if you can support and grow a thriving modding scene.

9.) Stockpile options need to be extended so that I can direct the flow of goods in the way that I see fit.

Thanks,
Nero

 

Okay. Here are some more points that I have found in spending more time with the game.

First is the pace/build up of the game. This may have something to do with the complete ineptitude of the military at the moment, but the bandit and fish-people attack random events are thrown at you first thing. Second game I was only in three minutes before my first fish-person raid. Due to my incompetent militia I lost my NCO and a worker before the other two wandered over and took out the attackers. This shouldn't happen. It doesn't even happen in Dwarf Fortress like this unless you choose to settle in a region that is extremely dangerous and even then it is rarely within the first minutes of a campaign. Give us a 5 to 7 day grace period. During this period don't throw tons of immigrants at us or a ton of building materials but allow us time to get the colony off it's feet. Maybe on the third day send some materials and maybe the second send a wave of immigrants. It is made even worse by the fact that the entire lot of my workers are also nincompoops. They have no idea what to accomplish first. "Here is a bed that I could make so I can sleep, nope - just going to go move this one piece of wood that is already in the stock pile to another spot in the same stockpile." That is an issue and it really ties into one of my previous points.

Workers accomplish next to nothing efficiently and it frustrates me to no end when I have 6 - 10 beds that need to be assembled in a bunk house and 2 get assembled and 5 days later not even another single bed is assembled. The AI of the workers needs a lot of love and ton of work before it is something that is functioning. I mean the workers are the heart of the game, and as such they need to be top of the list on the stuff to get right first. This would help pave the game a lot better because you know what is getting done.

Next thing that seriously grinds my gears is when constructing modules. The item that you select doesn't stay on your mouse pointer like nearly every other builder series. I have to move back to the UI panel and select it again. I should be able to select it, place the number I want, then have deselect it through maybe pressing escape or a right mouse button click.

Overseers and immigration. On one of my latest colonies I have a glut of workcrews that are just the overseer in it. No, workers, just the overseer. It bothers me because these people aren't really accomplishing much of anything. Which leads me to the workcrew system which I think is not a very good design decision, no offense. I touched on it in my main post but playing with it more I just see it as an annoyance. It is bothersome and tedious to have to manage it and I'd rather have to manage individual workers or workers have AI intelligent enough to find the correct work to do, with options to override the AI control. Something similar to that would invest me much more to the characters. I believe that there are much better options to be discussed concerning worker direction and control. I really like the job system of Dwarf Fortress. Take out the workcrew system and implement a Dwarf Therapist like system within the game. Or as mentioned in the post take the workcrew system and attempt to work it so that it is just an organization tool. I think the system could be decent if it had a deeper options and was made more efficient and user friendly. I am not really a designer, but I am an avid construction simulation and tycoon player and I am comparing the systems to games that I have played and greatly enjoyed.

Some of this may have sounded scathing, but I only mean it in the best possible way. I want to help make the game better.

Thanks,
Nero

 

I see you have problems with beds, are you sure you had both cloth and planks to build themost? If so it might be a bug, because I had similar where my bed building just stopped for no reason, however I only ever experienced that once.

 

100% positive that I had both. They would build two or three, then my carpentry workshop would output a few planks because I had it on maintain X number but those planks would never go to the beds. Even if I had planks laying in the stockpile and people idling. Then there was the rare cases where people would put the resources in the footprint, but just never construct it.

 

Definitely sounds like a bug then. While they're lazy, they're not that lazy

 

Ah, well the point still stands I suppose. The AI needs some work, especially on how to go about the queue of jobs. They're pretty lazy about getting on those workshop jobs. I'll use up my planks and have to wait 1 - 2 days to get anymore in. Even if it is some low number like 3. I've tied that partially to the workcrew system which I find very inefficient.

 

Couple of points.

All orders are grouped into jobs when you order them, and work-crews handle jobs each at a time. This is actually really, really important, because it means for instance that multiple small forage orders are also multipe jobs, so multiple crews work at them at once, while one large forage order is one job... and one labourer now harvesting 800 lingon berries. Secondly, some jobs take precedence. I'm fairly confident the job-enable/disable menus in the workcrew overview is arranged in levels of precedent, from foraging to hauling.

So your lazy workers aren't neccesarily lazy - if you have more current jobs ongoing than your workcrews, they'll do the "most important ones", and you can look in the job overview to see what those are. Then they get done, and you add more, and the things you want aren't getting done because you add to the pile. It's a little counterintuitive at first, but it actually is very much like the job system in DF.

You can also manually move job priorities around in there, if you want to change things. This is also why it's easier to get people to haul things to your stockpile if you make sure there's either less jobs needing to be done than you have workcrews, or workcrews free to haul by disabling jobs they'd otherwise do.

Also, each farm plot is one job. If you want something constructed, but build 4 small farms to have your agrarian society food needs met, that's some benches that'll never see the light of day because your workcrews are stuck farming. This is also the case if your carpentry shop workcrew need to keep 5 planks, but are busy foraging or farming. They'll farm and forage before making planks.

As to needing to specify specific jobs for specific workcrews, you can, err, already do that in the workcrew menu by turning things off and on? Further, if somehow the workcrew ends up doing a job you don't want it to do, you can cancel the job.

Military-wise, you should use the Rallying point command to order squads near where they're needed. Of course, if they're busy farming or doing another job, they won't go, so you need to make sure they're either not allowed or not doing so. If you just leave the soldiers to wander around, that's exactly what they'll do.

 

I know how that system functions, but I don't feel like the system is intuitive. I would like more precise control. I feel like there is a disconnect between the jobs system and the workcrew system that is missing something. In Dwarf Fortress I make a job and a dwarf does that job, but in CE I make a job, it has to be delegated to a workcrew then that workcrew has to go through their priorities to find it, and it could be 20th on a list of their jobs, unless I am not understanding the mechanics of the system. In DF a dwarf doesn't do that job until it pops up on their priority list, and if it doesn't do it then another dwarf will be there to do it. From my understanding only the work crew assigned the job can work on that job. I also understand that the game is still very early in development and the AI needs a lot of work. The system could improve leaps and bounds with a better AI and less bugs. Sometimes it is hard to tell what is a design feature and what is a bug. First World Early Access Problems.

The further couple of paragraphs were just reiterations of your point so it is all addressed.

Military should be Johnny on the spot. If they're halfway through carrying a log to the stockpile then they should drop that log and run to defend the settlement.

 

Apologies, I didn't intend to imply you were unaware of how the systems worked. That was a bit accidentally rude. Just that the job system is a bit opaque, and I agree completely with your desire to have more information feedback. It's because of the way it works, even if you go from 17 to 56 colonists but only have 5 workcrews, you can only really get 5 jobs done at once. So some laziness and exasperation with your colonists steadfast refusal to build that damn kiln could be an artefact of having too many open job tickets and too few workcrews, with prioritized jobs always taking the available labour.

Then if you desperately need plans, it gets bottlenecked and worse and worse.

 

Another possible reason for your planks problem is that the stockpile considers resources that have been placed in preparation for construction to still be part of the stockpile.

For example: Let's say you have an order for five cots, but a standing order to maintain 3 planks in your stockpile at all times.

1) Three logs get turned into planks.
2) Three planks are placed at cot construction sites.
3) The Carpentry Work Crew sees that the stockpile still contains three planks (even though they're at construction sites, and not in the stockpile), so the standing order for 3 planks is fine.
4) No more planks get made until the existing planks are consumed, when the cots are eventually built.
5) Nobody even starts on your remaining two cots until the first three are completely built; the last two cots have to wait for the harvest of two more logs and their processing into planks.

 

So it would be a bug then? Because it would seem that, if we are going with common sense, removing the planks from the stockpile would remove them from the stockpile data wise. I guess some of the feedback may be premature because of existing bugs, but I still feel the complaints are for the most part fair and valid critiques of systems.

I think the big thing is making it a transparent and informative system. It would go a long way to making the system a lot more usable. I still feel the workcrews system isn't very good. I don't get how it really works with the theme.

Here is maybe an idea.

You maintain workcrew systems but you add in a way to have overseer-less workcrews that would have some sort of productivity penalty for not having an overseer. That way I can pull out a single worker to kind of unclog a bottleneck.

 

Modding is already fully supported, what is lacking is any kind of mod packager or versioning support, and integration with steam workshop. The modding system is also undocumented and any mods made right now are liable to be broken by new versions of the game.

 

I see what you're saying. I guess I've played a lot of DF and DF-likes and got used to the system. That being said if the AI steps up it's game then I believe the system would work fine. I believe a lot of the feedback about the system may stem from early access problems as I discovered as the post moves on. There are a few things that I still don't like about it mechanics wise. I feel that it really ties up large amounts of my labor pool doing little at times and really causes bottlenecks in the economy. If one link in the chain breaks your whole machine grinds to a halt and you have to go in and troubleshoot. The good thing about the solo worker system is that usually there is another worker to pick up that task if one worker goes insane or something and it is a fairly immediate thing. Again, going back to early access points and what not being the cause of some laziness among workers, sometimes if someone drops a task it doesn't get picked back up until it comes back around the job loop.

In my opinion the ability to mod and modding support are not the same thing. I am not saying add modding support right now, but it is a good thing to have for down the road. Especially if you can build a strong community up around your game. I mean look at Skyrim, or go all the way back to Morrowind. People are still modding Morrowind actively, and it has been out for a decade or more.

 

I think it speaks to the health of the mod community and the intentions of the devs that there are people modding the game right now, without the packager or version support.
And if you look at Dredmor, Gaslamps' other game, the modding community there is still active last I checked.

The other points I mostly agree with. I prefer less micromanagement to more, since that was one of the things I dislike about DF. I also like the idea of "If one link in the chain breaks your whole machine grinds to a halt and you have to go in and troubleshoot." - that seems to be the purpose of the cults, imo. Your colony trucks along pretty well without you, but if you stop paying attention for too long suddenly your overseer's gone on a murdering spree, your farms are filled with clawbulbs, and you're scrambling to restore sanity. It's fun, imo.