Protip: Put some cots in your chapel.

Churches are pretty expensive though. And they require a workcrew.

 

They're really not all that expensive, you just got to have a 'go to ABC guide to rush building' process mapped out, as evidenced by the 'playthroughs' and 'early colony examples' posted around these forums of churches up and going at 20-30 population.

And yes, it requires a workcrew but for the exploitable benefits that's in no way a balancing factor.

That's a balancing factor to having a base church that simply does what it should do. Not having something that forces happy brainwashing thoughts into all colonists sleeping anywhere in the building.

 

I really like the unintended nature of this interaction, but I tend to agree that weird interactions sometimes cross the line into non-intuitive territory. I'm conflicted about how valid / allowable a tactic this should be. But here are a couple Skyrim examples:

Horses and chickens could see you commit crimes and report them - removed from the game for being unintuitive and unnecessarily punishing for players.

Putting a bucket on a shopkeeper's head would prevent him from seeing you looting everything from his store - allowed.

Giants smashing you into the ground would fling you into the air due to weird physics interaction - allowed.

 

I'm enjoying this series of protips - it's like an old newspaper advice column ('Dear Heloise, how do I get fishperson blood out of clothes?')

 

Citing Bethesda for putting effort in allowing/disallowing things in their game as conscious decisions is probably not exactly a good example.

The giants thing isn't that Bethesda allowed it or even something that is emergent behaviour, it's that the foundations they've been rehashing, ripping the guts out of and trying to piece together to get whatever the heck they can out of since the Morrowind days is notoriously bad and riddled with problems that they just can't be arsed to resolve.

People shrug and go "Well it's Bethesda, they're special" and just go along with it, pay out their £50 for the latest bug riddled shittly optimised problematic release and wait for modders to fix things for little to no return on the time fixing the absolute garbage mess the developers spewed out.

But it's not really 'interesting physics interactions' as more 'Shit engine behaviour in that regard', as evidenced by things like physics breaking apart if your framerate goes over 100-120 or whatever the point was. Or VSync being more or less mandatory in order to keep the physics from just outright crapping at the drop of a hat out and insta-CTDing your game.

The chickens/horses thing was likely more "Yeah we simply didn't pick that bug up in QA amidst all the other problems we shipped the game with but it's simple enough so we'll fix it." rather than any actual intended behaviour bringing about amusing results.... could have been anything as simple as miscategorising certain entities or having some groups be flagged to have behaviour they shouldn't have.

 

I wouldn't mind sleeping through a sermon getting a memory similar to listening to a lullaby: mildly soothing, but not as mood-influencing as listening to the actual content.

 

Perhaps the sleeping sermon could have a random chance to cause mildly pleasant memories, and a random chance to cause fire-and-brimstone nightmares?

Vicar gets severely depressed watching people fall asleep during his sermons? (Maybe he joins a cult for more "exciting" worship?)

Snoring sometimes drowns out the sermon even for people that are awake? "Phineas Bronzewhistle attended a sermon recently, but it was hard to distinguish 'Thou Shalt' from 'Thou Shalt Not' over the raucous repose of Cornelius Tack."

I think it's funny and somewhat realistic, just needs some kind of drawback to make it an actual option rather than a must-do

 

If Gaslamp are willing to turn what was a behaviour oversight and flesh it out into a full blown set of independent behaviour reactions like this, I'd be all for pretty much all of these ideas.

As a whole they pretty much cover a good set of pros and cons for having colonists sleeping in silly places. As an aside, workshop and other work occurring in close proximity to the colonist should probably also disturb their sleep... or at least have a chance to disturb them.

"Cornelius Tack tried to get some overdue rest in a bed well below his station but was rudely awakened by the fact their cot was positioned in the middle of a bustling sawmill. How inconsiderate.".

I seem to recall a dev pointing out colonists were being rudely awakened by gunfire which was causing a recent bug I was having, so it makes a whole lot of sense to have various work modules project a smaller radius version of that same disruption when used.... even for vicars rambling off at podiums.

 

From what I remember, getting preached to while sleeping might also work well with some lovecraftian themes. The ability for a preacher to induce a sleep full of terrifying, maddening nightmares might also be a potent weapon in the hand of a colony that has chosen a particularly cultist, abomination-worshipping, colonist-sacrificing approach to existing.

 

Slight difference between getting lulled into a hypnotic/sleep state filled with certain dreams/visions as a directed action undertaken by someone, and just randomly wandering in to sleep somewhere in a building and overhearing and consciously remembering things going on there.

If Vicars get a 'hypnotist' task where they can wander up to someone sat in the church and force them to enter a suggestive state and receive specific memories, that's fair enough.

But just being consciously preached to from general undirected sermons after wandering in to sleep in a cot somewhere in the building as actual game behaviour is just cheap, hacky and well exceeding the point something just becomes a outright broken exploit.

 

Will admit, I'm not quite sure if your post is meant more of an acknowledging some of the suggestions made as being noted and taken into consideration for later decision making on how to approach this 'interesting behaviour', or if the post is more "So this is what we've decided to do about this".

But if it's meant to be outlining the plans you've all established for approaching things like this, then it sounds almost perfect.