REVISION 37B NOW IN EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH

Worst example of away-from town bug, sorry I couldn't find if it had already been assigned a code.
Basically a large amount of people, one after another, started going in one direction and didn't stop.
No DMP, but I did get a save. It's large, let me know if you want me to upload.

 

Did they list their job as return goods to stockpile rather than return to civilisation?

There seem to still be cases where meat from animals killing other animals gets flagged as player owned, so the haulers try to retrieve it.

 

Return to stockpile and return to civilization.

 

For your perusal, some colonists wandering out into the black for raw meat. Not quite the edge of the map, but still Suspicious Behaviour...

 

Having played a colony with over fifty colonists, I'd like to re-emphasize this point.

Tone. Down. Hunger.

 

Disagree, from an appearances standpoint; if memory serves for past patch notes, colonists will eat once each per day given sufficient supply. Going more than a day without eating, without feeling hunger, just seems a bit less plausible than crops which grow in a day or two in these Foreign Soils, so...

...since that places a floor on demand, the change should probably be in supply, where there's room to play with crop stage timers, sowing/tending/harvesting colonist time requirements, and the application of other tools/commodities (fertiliser, mechanical sowers/harvesters, etc) to up output and ease the pinch as the colony's technology advances along with its population.

 

I agree with this completely. Stackable items from farms would be great.

 

I saw the blog post, containers! Elegent solution, and the best of both worlds! Mostly! I can still think of a couple of edge cases that may cause problems...

 

Reduce hunger, increase supply, decrease cooking time, whatever works to balance things a bit so your colony isn't always on the brink of starvation.

 

Although I agree with Kiojan that in the current build colonists are voracious predators for all things fungi, berry and anything else edible really, I don't understand why we are becoming so fixated on balance issues at this point? I'm no game developer (and my understanding of the process is limited to say the least) but I would have thought that until all/most features are implemented it is largely redundant to discuss balance as it is subject to massive change. Fishpeople too strong? Just you wait until GLG add the fishcinerator cannon, all of a sudden fishpeople are a mere annoyance. I guess my point is that I'm sure we will be given more tools to deal with late game hunger issues in the future - automated irrigation and farming, greater yields due to cult worship/fertilizer, faster kitchen production as better ovens used and overseers level abilities perhaps? Personally I can't really see how balanced or unbalanced the game is at this stage as it is too underdeveloped in terms of features.

 

Also isn't food-production at this stage... not that bad? I haven't had much trouble since the yield was updated to 2x per farm plot. 60 farm plots is 120 items of food!
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The major problem with colonist specific starvation isn't actually a food issue because it's actually a stock-pile issue. You have 60-80 colonists, and 70 food items in your stockpile. Since almost everyone eats at "night" they eat when they hunger trigger ticks one for a day's done work, making a massive rush to your stockpiles by 60-80 colonists at the same time. Colonists number 71 starts starving, and won't get more food until the next crop cycle because stockpiling >70 items of food is quite frankly a bit improbable when everyone eats at the same time. You solve that with foraging, fish-people or making more farms. I switched to planting one farm zone for each building in the colony, or one one for each 5 colonists and that works fine. I haven't had anyone starve in a long time, even if they sometimes go hungry.

The food situation is not the actual problem here, nor is the hunger timers as one unit per day per colonist is very reasonable. The problem is just the bottle-neck of having stockpiles that prevent starvation when individual colonist outside the rush-cycle of the main colony get hungry, so display that they're hungry, and so want to eat food. Then they might try getting some when food is available, but they're really competing with the other 69 colonists to get food at the right time because crop-cycles end up finishing nearly at the same time as colonists work the fields.

Randomizing the individual timers a bit more might help, or alternative making it so that colonist can "Fertilize" a field with sulphur fertilizers in an emergency.

Edit: Or, as it goes: "Our first challenge is to create an entire economic infrastructure, from top to bottom, out of whole cloth. No gradual evolution from previous economic systems is possible, because there IS no previous economic system. Each interdependent piece must be materialized simultaneously and in perfect working order; otherwise the system will crash out before it ever gets off the ground."

When individual pieces (aggregate food demand clustered a specific times) beat linear time-based food-supply (crop-cycles ticking down individually) the result is a system of near-starvation.

 

I am more than aware that the farming/food issue may be addressed by future updates and tools. I thought this was implied, but this is my impression of the game as it currently is. I am giving honest, frank feedback on my experience. If fixes to this issue are already planned, great. If not, well, if I said nothing (or even claimed the opposite) there's a chance the problem wouldn't be recognized and addressed now, which may create bigger headaches down the road. Furthermore, since food supply/demand is a critical component of a functioning colony it should be at least partially balanced early on so the game is playable; it's hard to check if the laboratory is functioning properly when you can barely spare the colonists to manufacture iron plates. And the game should be at least partially playable most of the time anyways since this is early access.

Oddly enough, I really don't get a nighttime food rush. Colonists seem to eat throughout the day and night, maybe slightly more in the evening. In fact, the day/night cycle isn't really respected by the colonists as whole in the current build.

That said, yes, it is a bit more of a logistical than supply problem. It's not that it's impossible to provide enough food for everyone (though it demands a gigantic chunk of your population). The issue is that there are a number of bottlenecks in the production line and it is very, very vulnerable to any disruption. That said, I honestly think the easiest and simplest way to fix this would be to reduce hunger a bit. I would point out to those who argue that a colonist eating once a day is more realistic that day/night cycles that last minutes and an entire population that can accept and perform any task, from cooking food to performing dangerous scientific experiments, isn't particularly realistic either but it works for the game. Either that or stacking, which seems to be the direction things are going, so colonists don't spend so much time walking from point A to B to carry food and eat.

And as for cooking all of the food...theoretically possible even for larger colonies, but I think you would have to dedicate at least half, if not more of your population to doing nothing but farming and cooking. And forget making food items that demand two components.

 

I just had an extremely, extremely frustrating session in New Sogwood. Sometimes it turns out alright, but more than half the colonies I've started there lately have been Not Fun. It was the usual story - the constant influx of wandering fishpeople continually disrupting the nascent colony with no real way of slowing them down. Let me share some of my observations about the region.

Colony design is critical when you start in New Sogwood. You need to guard your crops very carefully (and even then expect a fishperson to regularly slip in there and destroy a few squares, particularly during the first couple of weeks; they currently seem to place higher priority on destroying crops than living). Using buildings as a barrier is a viable tactic, though it makes expansion cumbersome later on in the game if you cluster them too tightly. Gabions, unfortunately, aren't really an option until late game (assuming you survive that long) owing to the paucity of lumber; use them to plug up holes in your perimeter or as a lure to distract fishipeople since they love destroying the things. Drafting one or two militias in the beginning is practically a must, though make sure you have enough guns to go around. Try not to send your colonists out too far when you gather resources since it's all too easy for them to catch a fishperson's attention and get chased around Benny Hill style. Though colonists now tend to be a little more intelligent when retreating (i.e. not running out into the wilderness) they frequently pause while running and fishpeople do not, meaning their pursuer will quickly catch up with them (and sometimes they just stand still and let them fishperson beat them to death). And as I mentioned in a previous post, if certain critical resources (stone and clay) aren't close to your starting point you might as well just quit and try again on a different map.

I've noticed that soldiers do not use up combat supplies in the current build. Not sure if this is a bug or a temporary balance fix. In either case, if combat supply depletion were reintroduced with no other adjustments I'm not sure New Sogwood would be viable at all. The sheer number of wandering fishpeople means you'd probably run out of bullets after a few days, leaving your men ineffectual in combat. While fishpeople always lose against footsoldiers or even militia individually (I once killed a total of 57 fishpeople over the course of four days with only three footsoldiers) they are not that weak; their AI simply places higher priority on chasing selected targets or destroying crops rather than defending themselves. When they retreat, assuming they get away they tend to linger on the edge of the fog of war rather than escape entirely and will usually slink back. This definitely causes more chaos in the colony as a whole; again, not sure if this is intentional or a result of wonky AI. As it stands they behave more like nigh-fearless suicidal terrorists than angry, hungry monsters. If their AI were tweaked to be more focused on killing direct threats, fishpeople raids of sufficient number would be true existential threats to the colony. By the by, I haven't ever gotten a fishperson raid in New Sogwood greater than 3-4. It would seem kind of redundant anyhow. Owing to the current job bug I eschewed ordering my colonists to butcher fishperson corpses. However, if fishpeople raids are indeed made worse when a fishperson discovers a corpse of a comrade...jeez, you'd want to butcher fishpeople simply to get rid of the mounds of corpses rather than the food. You'd think that sort of thing would make them angrier, though. Maybe fishperson steak, cooked or raw, should enrage them as well (though coupled with the already high number of fishpeople in New Sogwood this would push their numbers into outright ridiculous territories).

I think the crux of the issue is that you simply don't have much agency to deal with the fishpeople threat in New Sogwood during early and mid game. It feels more like a crap shoot rather than a threat that can be dealt with by using careful planning and clever tactics. Will your soldiers happen to be close enough to the crops when a pair of fishpeople wander in from the map? Will a soldier happen to chase a fishperson too far into the jungle and get mobbed by a trio of them that just happened to be in the area? Will your farmers manage to spend enough time cultivating a field to provide food for your colony before you run out of coconuts or will they get continually chased away by the fishpeople who slipped through your perimeter?

P.S. I also noticed that fishpeople don't use spineguns in the current build; I see some wielding them but they never fire 'em.

 

The game is more than partially playable. I can manage to get a functioning colony together in the current build without focussing solely on farming and cooking. This particular build is also experimental, which will have bugs and imbalances by it's very nature. I guess I remember a few patches ago when hunger wasn't an issue at all and farms were largely redundant. I'm glad we have to focus a little more on farming now - I think it would be a very real concern of a fledgling colony - but personal preference aside this could all change drastically next patch as another feature is introduced.
What really bothers me at this stage is game breaking bugs and CTDs. Personally the most annoying thing about starting a colony currently is that I don't know if half of my population will starve to death as they get stuck in various modules and are unable to eat or do anything of note. That is particularly irritating as the colonists aren't even doing anything interesting! The other killer bug is the "colonists frozen on stockpiles unable to drop items which also leads to starvation. On the plus side - dead colonists don't eat (at least I think they don't) so maybe that helps with the food issue.

 

In other news, it appears vicars are perfectly happy to preach while surrounded by building materials in a chapel still under construction...

 

Agreed, I'm having no problem getting a good food supply going in this build, even in New Sogwood (where I admittedly have to rely on Fish Person corpses fairly often). If anything it's still a little on the forgiving side for my tastes, though as you say there's plenty of balancing to come.

 

Has anyone else come across an issue where colonist only flee a step at a time before re-setting? Just started happening in last two games. Sometimes the colonist and their pursuer would 'stick' on something non-existent before flying several squares in their intended direction. And in a previous game, tools would stick and then fly into their hands outside of the bend and pick up animation.