ALPHA 45 RELEASED ON STEAM: "How to Make Enemies and Exorcise People"

Likewise i got 2 cults at the same time, but only 2 members each.

 

I reported this on the steam forums back in 44A, though it ended up getting spread over several posts as I progressively figured out what caused the bug so it probably got too cluttered for the devs to figure out what I was talking about I guess, lol.

To reproduce the bug: whenever a laborer who is collecting/delivering a material for the object or building being constructed is transferred to another overseer the material delivered won't get counted towards the structure (you can confirm this by checking that the material count don't go up upon delivery) and thus not consumed upon completion of it. Unfortunately this causes the material to get frozen in place and not usable afterwards even if it still gets counted towards your commodities list.

I assume this often happens for you, like it did for me, whenever you relocate new workers after they've arrived to your colony. To avoid this from happening be particularly observant when it comes to colonists that get auto-assigned to an overseer that is currently building a structure or object as they will often almost instantly get assigned to help out with bringing materials, so wait with reassigning these until they are done and you will avoid this bug until this bug is fixed.

 

I got three members one time, but that was when I decided to to "lock" everybody in the colony and stop all food production for several days. That time 3 cults formed, 2 with 2 members, 1 with 3 members and one of the cultists went through the first stages of the "scantly" known fishy transformation. I do not wish do discuss the other things that happened there.

Just as a side note, and as the devs and we all mostly know, I haven't been able to get a cult form under 'normal' game play conditions. Two, 40+ day play through's. (I'm using the term normal as loosely as I can here). The increased madness has been felt, as well as the requests to form a cult. But it seems in my play through's they pick the wrong person. I wonder the cult creator would be a little smarter in choosing colonists who would be more likely to join, such as colonists who have been acting mad. Not that they should have hidden knowledge in who would be the most likely, but rather, by observing the current emotional state of the colonist, who would be most likely. Makes me wonder if the pick out colonist for cult membership request is completely random or not.

 

I think you might need to take a look at the pub and church at high populations. Once I get large enough to the point where a lot of job requests come in at once, the "take confession" and "serve drinks" jobs get borked, every time. The vicar and bartender refuse to do anything after that.

 

Targeting maddened people should definitely help. It's odd though, I see so many fully-maddened colonists get invited and reject the offer either by disinterest or extreme offense. I test this by starving my 100+ population colonies and watching the cultists invite the crazy folk repeatedly with no luck. Maybe it's because they're enemies? I can never remember who enemies are because they aren't listed in the character panel like friends.

 

This seems to correlate with what i could see, the cult leader often being middle class, and the follower being lower class. And yeah if a formed cult doesn't have more chance to attract a new cultist than a colonist trying to starting a new cult, i can see why it is very rare to have a 3 member cult and nigh impossible to have 4 members.

I think cult should attract maddened people somehow.
The job "perform cult ritual" (ie when your cult leader don his Cultist Robes and perform Strange Movements around a cultist shrine) should have a chance to attract maddened people who could either get a some more madness or be recruited into the cult. Once in the cult they'll meet with the cult leader at night with hoods and stuff.

When enough cultists gather for a ritual it should have a chance to trigger an Eldricht Happening of a kind related to the kind of cult. For instance a fishperson cult would transform one of the cultist into an actual fishperson and stuff like that (but i guess you already have tons of idea for cultist related stuff).

 

I see. I tried to mitigate this effect by building a chapel and pub when my population was still in the 30s, so that I could avoid the deluge or orders if I had waited until later. Still, once my population hit 80, they just couldn't keep up. I'm going to try and build two chapels and two pubs to see if that would mitigate things.

To be honest, I think I liked it better when the colonists would just grab a drink for themselves from the stockpile. Is the goal of the pub part of the overall vision for the social interaction part of the gameplay? I assume the finished version will have more depth of use to the game? Otherwise it's functionally the same as picking up a beer from the stockpile, except more complicated and prone to bugs.

Also, thank you for all of your guys' attention to user feedback.

 

I haven't noticed it anywhere yet so ill mention it: colonists will not eat sugarloaf, at all. they will eat raw sugarcane first. and people.

 

Does a colonists traits factor in whilst weighted up against the type of cult that's trying to be formed, regardless to their madness state?

Or is the type of cult formed picked (partially) at random once the attempt has succeeded and the game then determines what group to create?

For example if someone receives a cult recruitment offer to form a nature worship cult but they have the fishy behaviour trait, would they be more likely to decline the offer as they would be more interested in joining a fish person worship cult?

Or is the recruitment completely neutral and the colonist just reacts based on their madness and social/personal standings with the colonist that extended the offer?



If the former, rather than finding the maddest colonist to invite to join, could it be possible to search for the colonist closest to the ideologies of the cult wanting to be formed, and then factor in madness as a secondary bias?

It could perhaps help broaden the chance of larger cults and also lead to a more like minded cult membership by targeting traits primarily and madness secondary whilst having traits hold a reasonable sway when determining the reaction to recruitment offers.

 

Any chance that already-mad, spiritually inclined, easily influenced, etc colonists, on witnessing a cult act, might initiate an attempt to join, rather than hoping the cult spots them? Higher social classes then might stand a better chance of convincing the cult to accept them...

("I say, that seems positively fascinating stuff you have going on with that square with five right angles in it. Do you chaps and ladies do a newsletter?")

 

You also need to check job assignments for mines. Sometimes, even after I unassign a crew from a mine, their mining job still lingers in the job menu.

 

Went on the forum to report about this exact thing, lol. You can salvage the labor crew by moving them to another overseer, but the original overseer that got unassigned from the mining job get perma-borked, will only do hauling jobs... and paperwork.

 

If you assign them to another job like carpentry or whatever, sometimes they'll fix themselves. You will still need to manually delete the mining assignment from the jobs menu too, though.

Or, activate frontier justice and murder the guy :3

 

Also, the 3x2 carpets are being constructed with 2 iron ingots. I'm pretty sure that's a mistake.

 

Oh right, I didn't think about that. Will try, thanks :3

Part of the problem from what I've observed is that a colonist will not wait too long and decide to just move about soon after without canceling their request which causes the vicar, barber and bartender to play catch up with them only for the task to fail (have no effect) when they finally catch up with the colonist. It would be nice, and help a lot in itself, if the colonists at least stayed put whenever someone actually got assigned to help them rather than whimsically wander off almost instantly.

 

Oh wait, shit, don't do that. I think if you do that, the mine becomes permanently deactivated :/