REVISION 37D NOW IN EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH

Are Overseers not suppose to flatten terrain?

 

It really slows down the early game, wow. I think I like it though, you can take a lot more time to decide who does what based on personality traits etc. However, now that there are only 7 colonists to begin with, them wandering into the the jungle for random meat is a serious problem. Other than that, got a solid 8 days in without any serious issue, so that was nice.

Playing on a 1920x1080 monitor, the new colonist window thumbnails are a wee bit too small. I can't really tell overseers apart anymore by looking at them. But I like the thumbnails being a bit more manageable, so please keep tweaking it.
Oh, something also that has been bugging me for a bit - in the work crew menu the scroll bar always defaults to the bottom, but it only shows the first work party in the list at the bottom of the pane, forcing you to scroll down anyways. Any chance it can default to show work crews at the top of the window when you open the pane?

Keep it up!

 

First two days.

Two of my seven starting colonists (including the NCO) were slaughtered by a pair of wandering fishpeople (the NCO preference for a pistol didn't help, not to mention the fact she'd already been wounded by a falling crate).

I'm not even going to attempt to start a colony in New Sogwood under the current set-up.

UPDATE: Construction takes much, much, much longer now. It's not just that you only start out with seven overseers; the construction time has been substantially increased even for modules. Thank goodness I play in windowed mode; as it stands it'd get kind of boring if I couldn't browse the net while I wait for my colony to creep along.

I'll keep poking at it, but so far I am REALLY not a fan of this update gameplay-wise.

If we're going to stick with the seven overseer model, there NEEDS to be an immigration option that will ONLY give you lower class workers. It's too easy to get stuck with too many middle class and not enough laborers, which will slow your economy to a crawl owing to the one work crew limit on most jobs.

On the plus side, it does seem more stable.

 

This is (IMO) a long-standing bug. Right now it makes terrain flattening impossible until lower class criminals/migrants arrive.

Edit: console & replay for terrain flattening and meat ownership from animal kills rearing its head again.

 

here's my gripe's
I've posted already about starting NCO having issues... somewhere, prob in bugs
UI for workgroups (as stated above) for 1920x1080 is quite small, however the change is welcomed. about halfway between then and now would be good
request that criminals coming in go to top line like "3 of anyone you got" labourers
wow my spelling terrible tonight, even spell checker is like wth
Time it takes for anyone farming - progress time to completion.... Holy @#$%. Please adjust this so that the initial timer for Terrible farmer is that of Not-Terrible farmer. With having all the citizens cut work for the night, am only able to farm 2 maybe 3 spots in a farm plot for the whole day.
--Also please decrease the amount of farming one has to do before they become at least somewhat capable. 16 days in, and half the people I started full dedication to farming are still only not-terrible. rest are halfway decent. So right now, I still can't have a dedicated 3 teams to keep on up on 6 farms, so everyone that can, still has to come grab a hoe and get to it, and once in a while someone will wander off to knock down a tree.
I would say the same about construction times, but I am acceptant of this. Building things does take time. It's the farming that's right out there in left field right now. The time it takes to get one farm even started really puts a growl in the tummies of the colonist. It's no wonder they are always afraid or mad at their neighbors,,, always growling at each other

Definite 2 thumbs up for the way the fishpeople attack comes as a wave of terror onto the scene. Have lost 3 soldiers thus far, not bad since the last wave was 14 of them. Makes it nice that you can get ready for the horde, and once they are done, put the military back to hauling things around.
However - conscripting citizens (as mention in bug section) None of them attempt to act the part. They just put on different clothes till you tell them otherwise.

Good thinking on just having workbench in carpentry workshop. Saves on those starting out fresh not getting stuck in the "where's my plank?" situations.

Alright i'll quit almost too long for me to re-read
Thank you much
Sethius

 

support page only has to 36b and didn't see place to upload files ---
got script error of "FSM drop_item being disabled" and anyone who picked something up to move it was then unable to put it anywhere. they were trying to place it in stockpile, but then I tried disabling stockpile options, everyone went wandering around but still wouldn't drop their items.
If replay is up, will show what the NCO did at very beginning, then replay will show issue involved above during last day (daytime).
unable to uploaded console.txt (73mb) fully zipped was still 4mb

 

followup issue I noticed during last fishpeople wave attack (within last couple of few days before end of above replay). Before, I had let the military wait for them to come and react, and they all came to the wave and let loose. The last time I saw the wave coming and put my rally points for the military in their path. When I did this. some of the military units engaged the fishpeople, but other's went right by them and to the rally point. Once I "canceled job" they proceeded back to engage them. Just a heads up.

 

Agreed on the farming issue (and disagreed on the construction issue; it's a bit too painfully slow right now, especially the modules).

Another problem is that for some reason colonists are slow to accept jobs and will remain idle for too long. I can't remember the number of times only a single member of my 4-5 colonist farming work crew was actually farming, the rest either sleeping or inexplicably idle. It was tricky, but possible, to keep your colony supplied with food in the previous build, but the increased farming time and borked job assignment...we'll see if it's still doable, but I doubt it.

 

-I love the seven dwarves start. The group feels more intimate and the world more imposing. It lets you get more attached to your starting individuals.

-Very happy too see the anger emotion have a real gameplay consequence. Traits/emotions are really coming together and it's fantastic.

-Could be alone on this, and I've mentioned it before, but those progress bars aren't my favorite thing, especially now that they're added to farming. You get a huge group of farmers planting at once and there's overlapping bars everywhere. I get that they serve a user-feedback purpose, and you'll notice them speed up as colonists level, but I as I play I start to ignore everything but those bars--like waiting for a program to download. It detracts from all the beautiful artwork and animation. I'm sure I'll get used to them though.

 

Don't get me wrong, increasing the construction task time is fine, as is increasing farming task time; the build just went too far. This, coupled with the seven colonist starting set-up AND the fact the day/night cycle has been reintroduced means the pace can be irritably slow in the early game. I think one of the hidden strengths of Clockwork Empires has been its steady pacing; it's rarely too slow to the point of being boring but rarely too quick to the point of frustrating the player. Up until now, anyways.

I advise reducing the construction time for modules, particularly smaller ones, and decreasing the time it takes to complete a farming job a bit (and/or fix/improve the job assignment system).

Minor aesthetic suggestion: surround buildings with dust cloud particle effects when they're being constructed.

 

I think I tend to agree. I can see the idea of them being good, but from my perspective, no individual task really takes long enough that I am concerned with the bars. Since most of the tasks currently in the game are basically, you know, 5-20 seconds of doing xyz, I don't see a big benefit to a brief progress bar over just, looking and seeing that Bob is chopping wood. For instance, I think a progress bar over an entire selection of trees being chopped would have more utility than a bar per tree.

Plus looking and seeing what folk are doing just feels more organic to me.

Progress bars might be nice if there come to be tasks that take considerable time, or maybe involve people starting, leaving, coming back and continuing, so you have an indicator when no one is at the helm that something is being done.

I do think it might be interesting to tie more information into some future aspect of upper eschalons of society, i.e. bureaucrats. You could have a town hall building or some such where someone keeps track of total farming progress, or total wood chopping, or what not. But just ruminating at that point.

 

They could always include progress bars and just make them optional.

 

I just started up the game in New Sogwood. Within about 10 seconds 2 (!) club armed fishmen arrived and promptly killed my NCO.

I decided maybe tonight was not the day I play this game...

 

Like I said.

 

OK, I have four fields, of which only one has actually been tended to (by a single colonist, who planted six, maybe seven seedlings). I dedicated two work crews consisting of three lower class laborers and an obligatory overseer to farming. Both remained idle throughout the day, leaving the fields fallow. Frustrated and puzzled, I permitted farming jobs for all civilian work crews. Another day passed, one laborer tended the same field for a brief period (I think) and then wandered off. Nothing else happened. There were three - and occasionally four - pending tend field jobs and multiple idle work crews, two of which were not allowed to do anything but farming. I checked and no, they weren't all busy sleeping, eating, etc. (including the overseers in most cases).

Please tell me other people are having this issue because for me, V37D is basically unplayable past the early game as colonists sometimes all but refuse to do any agricultural work.

 

I know for me, i placed 4 farms and they and the ppl were functional, but when i put down my next 8, there were 2 fields that took days before anyone would work on them. probably not the same issue, just an observation

 

game didn't collapse to give a dump file, but the chug factor hit on day 32 at 78 ppl and my stockpile got full. kept at it till it did it's final freeze up right as i got "new bandit crew" day 35, 85 ppl,
starting with 7 overseers is kinda nice excluding no flatten terrain. Influx of immegrants don't take long to fill.
Someone put about too many progress bars... I would like to agree with his suggestion on putting progress on the overall job marker, for woodcutting/mining. Obviously farming/construction you won't be able to implement that, but I'd rather know how much of the job is left to plan for the crew's next task.

 

ok, other then my initial "gripe's" post... I would like to say Very nice work in many of the aspects of the game.
I was able to save multiple times with decent confidence that i would be able to continue.
The fix with the farms being unusable after a fishperson took some swats at it, Very nice.
The workshop jobs were working well.
The gadbians placement and removal worked well.
The fact that some of my soldiers did not survive the fishpeople attacks, and having to take justice out on a ex-con that kept smashing things i needed.
As well as others, I've had no problem sitting here going as far as i could before total meltdown, and am already thinking of different strategies for the next round.
Thank You
Sethius