REVISION 37B NOW IN EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH

Hurray hauling is happening again.

Current game issues:

Soldier stuck in a module starving to death.
The floating starvation bubble does not remove on death (or at least on death when stuck in a module).
Jobs not completing correctly. Primarily flatten terrain, the area will be flattened but the job components will still be present.
Jobs not completing correctly. Also had a colonist get double assigned a job component (mine resource node), and work on neither.
Soldier not responding to another soldier in melee with a fish person.


Will update list as I see things,
Currently at end of day 18, had 3 overseers improve on skills. Opening the Work Crews panel causes the game to stop responding. It recovered after about 20 seconds, and updated to day 19. Got immigration event, accepted 3 people and tried to open the work crews panel. Game stop responding.
I will let it go for an hour or so and see if it recovers.

Will upload files on crash.
Got a library runtime crash, so no dump was generated.

 

Did you turn off the thing where people get extra chatty and social at night? I kinda liked that.

Now everyone just keeps working as if it's still day, which is great for productivity, but takes away some of the flavor.

 

I hate to say it, but I think hunger needs to be tweaked again. With 45 colonists I had five and a half full-sized fields with 3 dedicated workcrews of 4 colonists (3 lower class plus 1 overseer doing nothing but farming) growing food and they simply could not keep up with the demand.

Actually, that brings up an interesting point. How many well-tended fields should you require per colonist?

 

More errors!

The first time I made sulphur tonic, I received this error:



The chemist continued to make sulphur tonic and I even think the colonists drank some since it rapidly disappeared.

At some point (I couldn't tell what day because the marquee broke again) I received this error and the game hung (as in, it was as thought the game was paused and I couldn't unpause it). I tried to quit but had to force a shutdown via windows, hence the lack of a dmp file.



Oh, and I went through the entire game (around 20 days, probably more) with absolutely no resource drops. You might as well just cut them entirely at this point.

 

Musings after an error-free playthrough tonight (still gathering evidence for some of these), omitting my usual comments regarding stockpiles:

• Soldier response to alarms feels... erratic. Sometimes they will charge a full screen width to engage a raider, while others they just stand within shooting distance and do nothing or walk away. This seems particularly bad for crop destruction; I had to use rally every time the food supply was threatened just to get the military to pay attention to what was happening adjacent to a soldier.
• The new patrol job is a welcome addition...
• ...but it looks like Return To Civilisation should be called Flee From Civilisation. I routinely build my temperate settlements away from the supply drop point, adjacent to the high prairies. Both before and after getting buildings down, military especially will take the RtC job and run out into the wilderness, to a point south of the start location (assuming north is top-right in the isometric view unrotated from the start camera). Once they reach there they wander off to the next job.
• Have conversations been changed in terms of created memories? It's looking like only the character that initiates a conversation gets a memory of it, even if the person they were talking to has only the initial migrant seed memory or two on their track. Eg. Labourers infuriated by a Capitalist walking up to them and moaning about the hardships of the upper class don't seem to get a rage icon in their memories.
• Soldiers seem to pick up multiple guns (or at least render as though they have; either two guns in the same hand, or one in hand and one on the back (wielded, not hauling).
• Animation seems to be glitching a little. Some characters stand in the idle animation while performing tasks (eg forage).
• At least one colonist would not highlight when hovered. When another character walked behind her, that one highlighted instead.
• Have the migration/criminal class proportions been tweaked? Perhaps it was just chance, but I got a lot of overseers this time, yet no vicars...

(Replay and screenshots after sleep.)

 

Last two games I've built my bunkhouse a little late on account of trying to get a big big farm thing going. Not ready by end of day 2. At that point, everyone just starts standing still wherever they happen to be, with the job 'sleep (indoors)'. Until they starve to death. Not sleeping outside or indeed on the floor in the buildings (bunkhouse up but cots not made).

 

Seen the reappearance of a few bugs I thought had been squished, among them...

-Colonists getting stuck/freezing (sometimes in modules) apparently unable to complete 'drop tool' or 'eat food at table' tasks ultimately starving to death (including the old 'colonist stuck at the graveyard after burying the dead').

-Moving a module after it's placed - particularly wall-bound modules - whether by accident or design will sometimes 'lock' the module from being replaced anywhere on the building again. The only way to exit out of the module menu is to place the module in a forbidden area (e.g. a door out in open space) whereupon it will sit there, flickering (with a red square to indicate it is no longer functional).

-Standing still while fishpeople are chasing after them, their current task listed as 'fleeing to civilization.'

-Soldiers ignoring immediate threats when going to a bed to sleep.

And here are a few new ones.

-Colonists are apparently unable to remove dead crops.

-Behold, the amazing invisible footsoldier! She remained like this throughout the game!



I made a concerted effort to keep my colony fed and finally managed to do it, even building up a decent stockpile of veggies. It took four maximum size fields, three four-man work crews dedicated solely to farming (even hauling was shut off) and getting an early start on food production. This could sustain a 35-person colony. A single, six-stove kitchen manned by dedicated six cooks couldn't keep up, however, which will present a serious problem to morale later on. Larger colonies will require at least two kitchens manned by full-time cooks; if you only have one, food production may halt when/if the work crew gets roped into a 'generic' task like clearing terrain or butchering (or if most of them are asleep). Given the current appetite of the average colonist 1/3 to 1/2 of the population in any settlement will need to do nothing but farm and prepare food. Even then it's difficult to build up a stock and even short interruptions in the work chain can empty your larder, resulting in colonists spreading out to forage for food, grinding everything to a halt.

EDIT: Another 'bug' of sorts is that sometimes crops completely obscure the farm they're growing on, making you unable to select the farm itself. No matter where you point the cursor you wind up highlighting a crop rather than selecting the zone. Generally happens when you have a full field of crops in their penultimate state of growth.

 

@Kiojan, thank god I thought it was just me that was having food production issues! I've been making test games to explore the requirements for food and what I'm seeing lines up with what you're describing.

While probably more realistic I suspect this level of labor requirement isn't quite what's intended. Unless there are huge efficiency boosts planed via later tech.

 

With food production I found that If I dedicated a 6 - 8 person workcrew to only do farm work and nothing else they can tend to 4 - 5 farms and keep up food production for a colony of 50+. Other work crews come and help sometimes and I haven't had a food crisis yet. This does slow down the growth of other areas of the colony. In the screenshot, I've got a 7 person kitchen and farm work crew. I still get spoiled crops at times but I don't know if that's cause they are lazy or have to eat, sleep and do other things. I haven't yet tried to get the kitchen efficient enough to cook all the food that is harvested and similar to Kiojan, even with a 7 person dedicated kitchen crew, the colonists are ravenous pigs.

I haven't seen much cult activity but hopeful that will pick up once the colony can not sustain food production and people start to go mad. I also haven't crashed yet with 37b which is a nice surprise.

 

Had a couple of games out to day 10 and then to day 6, both ended by a recurrent crash, though I haven't noticed what seemed to be causing it (mac build).

Food production: plan has been to get 6 fields, 2 farmer crews and 2 kitchens up and running ASAP. To keep things simple, just 2 crops and each kitchen only producing one food item on repeat. That sustained me out to day 10 when I was starting to think about adding the third kitchen. Overall the balance needs tweeking.

In the 6 day game I saw the following:

Failing to respond to fishmen - colonists taking a beating and/or military walking on by.
Bandit flee/pick up cycle
Cooked food into building stockpile despite there being a food pile (only occasionally, not routinely going there)
Invisible soldier - just see weapon walking around (see above)
See weapons in the fog - this has been around for a while. Gives away fishmen and bandits.
Shooting through buildings - seems a bit unfair on the poor fishies
Getting stuck in normal modules, not just ghost ones or ones that have been moved.
Starving icon while sleeping - wake up and eat, idiot!
All stews have the same icon in commodities screen
Weird things happen can happen after placing gabbion lines - gabbion blueprints that don't get built and disappear when next blueprints put down
Maintain plank number of x doesn't work - just get continuous production
Everyone standing still doing sleep indoors job
Glitchy animation while mining
Colonists sometimes walk through walls, rocks etc

 

just to be sure: the problems with strange buildings were resolved or are still a common issue?

 

ok, another little problem: I dismantled the old kitchen, but the assigned crew kept the assignement. I will exploit the bug on loaded games, where the worskshopd don't keep the assigned crew...

 

For your viewing pleasure, here are not one, not two, not three, but four bugs in a single screen. A colonist stuck trying to drop off a tool in the graveyard, a ghostly, misplaced door that can't be moved, floating wheat, and a seriously messed-up marquee!

BTW, I think the Middle Class Single Bed is what's breaking the announcement marquee below.

 

Two curious things.
The Emperire's new superweapon: the double rifle;
And the "job-crate": I don't really know what it is, I've seen it more then once in my games...

 

And here something I'm quite proud of: I successufuly managed to build my colony away from the starting point. The "drop-zone" could really help similar situations... Lecit good, TOTALLY-LEGIT goods and colonists still spawns near the starting point, making a bit hard and dangerous to use them.
On the right the starting poitn, with the gold bars I just received, and on the left the edge of the colony

 

Hi! I was gone for the last ten builds or so, so forgive me if I repeat any known bugs, I've tried to research existing problems.

Played maybe ten games so far with 37b, i would say 8 of those ten have ended in crashes due to saving, one crashed for no obvious reason. The two most consistent oddities I am noticing are pathfinding to base and module placement. Lot of units consistently walk away from every bit of my town in attempt to return to it, put down a tool, etc. Have frequently had problems with military trying to trudge into the woods and leaving my fort unprotected. Below is an example of Brom doing this. Also a picture of the worst offender, Emory. He was the only NCO I had that routinely fled from battle. He also left town the most often trying to find it. Here you can see him sleeping under a stove where someone is making food, dying of starvation.

Module placement. With removing, or sometimes just moving modules, I've had some weird stuff. Since it's impossible to delete them it doesn't make sense to build lesser modules and then replace them with better quality equipment later on. When trying to unstick a module from one wall to get it to move to another it will sometimes go outside. About half the time, placing outside with hitting ESC will remove it. The other half of the time it stays. What's interesting is that once outside in becomes immovable but functional. My cooks were walking out to bake bread on stoves in the woods. The weirdest looking one is pictured below.

One small thing, noticed that for repairs, a cot shows up as a path name rather than a proper item name. Picture below.

Going back in, can't stop!


*EDIT: Just remembered! On a lot of modules natural or built, when I select them the options wheel appears on the other side of my map! If I'm zoomed in this freezes my screen without showing me why until I zoom out and can hopefully see it. I usually end up rotating and re selecting until I can find the wheel, usually hover over something completely different far away.