BETA 52E BETA 52E: THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE NEW BUTTON ON THE UI

I gave this version a fast play tonight. I am personally not a fan of the area jobs change. I know it takes time to get used to a change in gameplay such as this, but I really don't foresee me ever preferring it to the old drag and click system.

The main reasons I think are that:
- with the new system, 3 clicks are needed instead of two in order to remove a patch of something.
- There is a lot less control of which nodes to harvest. Sometimes I only want two nodes of the pile so I'm not mining too much too quickly. Yes it is doable with the area system, but not as easily.
- most importantly, it constricts the allotment of workcrews a lot in my opinion. I usually begin a game by clearing the forest area around where i want to begin construction. In previous versions, I could always get all the trees etc. that I needed cleared within the drag window, and thus allot one workcrew to the task of clearing a space, while the others could immediately start on other tasks. However, now I find that if the trees are too sparse, I may need to designate two area markers for the same clearing task. Usually I will do the designation at the same time, because obviously. But this means that one of my other workcrews may priorize that second clearing task instead of a mining job. The new system may be easier for new players, but I think it is going to constrict the more experienced players long term in terms of fine tuning the resource/workcrew management.


... also I just don't like the feel of it so far.
My two cents worth anyhow, take it as you like.

 

Agreed so far. Having to go into a menu just to harvest trees/stone is a bit much, when the old system was so smooth and fast.

I wish I had a better design suggestion for letting new players know how big jobs can tie up workcrews, but I dont.

 

Another small bit of feedback. Now that modules can't overlap, I'm having a devil of a time placing rugs and carpets in buildings that already have furniture. If rugs and carpets need their entire surface area to be unoccupied, it's going to be really difficult using them - I often put them in houses, where there's generally some overlap with the cots. Perhaps an exemption of the overlap rule for those modules?

 

Still on my first playthrough, but I just had to pop in to say I'm seriously loving the skills and traits being listed in the workshop dropdowns for assigning a workcrew now! I noticed on the loadout descriptions, they're still saying that you start with an NCO. My First Colony is still not starting with any planks anymore, which is fine if this is intended, but...is it? I don't recall seeing that change mentioned anywhere. It doesn't really change much other than it's impossible to start by building a kitchen now, either way. Lastly, a quick comment about the new predefined chopping/mining/etc...I'm finding that I'm actually unintentionally selecting more trees and such this way than I was with the click and drag method. You can still click to select one single tree/node, which is exactly what I've been resorting to so far until my workcrews get padded some. Could this maybe somehow be made an option toggle? Like Predefined/Freeform or somesuch? Or maybe, since single-click selecting a single node is still working even with this system in place, maybe even hold down Shift or something to keep clicking to add more than just the one node that way?

 

One last thing for tonight: I'm having trouble getting my colonists to forage anything: in the screenshot below, you'll see the site of a bandit camp and an airship crash, practically on top of my town. Because I can't select locations to forage with the drag-select, I've individually clicked each one, and selected 'forage' as appropriate. No Work Crews have taken up the forage tasks for several days now, even though I've cleared almost every other job.

 

The change to the way housing works is very neat, I like it! It gives it an upgradey feel, which is always satisfying for some reason.

 

Welp, there goes my 7x7 barracks full of 80 beds.

 

Ha .. . was going to be my comment too. Wish my devs were as productive despite Scrum!

 

Had a crash building a lower class house, sadly no .DMP file to show for it.

I like that the maps are smaller but I'm not sure I like the buttons to choose said map...kind of overly big and clunky...my opinion...I liked the small plain dots. Made it easier to see how much of what you were getting on a map...like oh the dot is more on high plains than desert...or whatever.

Glad that the trunks go 2 for the price of 1...but I still find it distracting from the other cooler things that are in the game.

Loving the traits...now it matters...and those combinations can get very wacky...I didn't get a wacky set this time.

I do actually like the new harvesting block thing...It took a bit to get used to...and I was like wha?! at first...It really does speed things up though....and the speed thingy...while I wasn't one that wanted that, I don't think the game needed it...I did fiddle with it and it's cool, now the Steam people can just quit it. LOL

Still think the upkeep system for sure needs to be worked on...out of everything that changed that is what still makes me not as excited to play anymore. With all the event arcs and stuff to do just on a regular basis in the colony...it either needs to be auto (take the resources needed to fix without us knowing it....lol) or a dedicated workshop to fix it. Something...I focus on those numbers and it consumes me from watching and doing other things...

This patch at least makes me want to play, not happy dance kind of want, but the last go through I just really didn't want to. Overall, I'm still going to stay great job!! You guys rock!

 

I can just imagine the cringing from that comment and the new drive to figure out what the new 'efficient' size is now that the use of beach huts has been somewhat undermined as the go-to cheap approach.

Perhaps 3x3x2... beach hut with two beds in the corner then a rug in the x2 extension..... wonder if anyone has given serious thought to developing machine learning skills just to be able to figure out the most efficient work arounds each time a update occurs.

 

Officially the most vicious colonists yet!
When they defend against bandits it's more the bandits defending against the colonists. There were no survivors.

The same goes for any poor animal that gets in their way.

 

Some new script errors.

 

Maybe just limit the size of the drag and drop box instead, it feels clunky now. There's two different ways to interact with on screen things and it's weird. the menu should be for placing new things and everything else should be clicking existing things imo.

 

Daniel! Long time no see!

Great work on the UI work of late.

 

The x2 speed just improved the quality of this game DRASTICALLY. I hardly play without it on now unless I want to see some fighting.

 

I'm glad it's there (especially for night time), but I can't bring myself to have it on very often. Everything looks a little too unnaturally "Benny Hill-ish". All it needs is some Yackety Sax in the background.

 

putting a window and a door on the same corner crashes the game.