REVISION 37D NOW IN EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH

So I spent a little more time with this build today, it seems more stable knock on wood. In this build I'm seeing pausing and stuttering in the game and animations failing to play. Additionally a work crew going into a mine causes a crash in seconds.

Biggest gameplay issue I'm seeing is farming, I'm unable to keep my colony fed. A kicker to this is when farming crews get too hungry they forage which exacerbates the problem, perhaps crews set to farming when they hit this state no longer idle during farming assignments and farm longer?

Check out the files and good luck!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4bxMjEzI-oKRUFWczVzSkhuelk/view?usp=sharing

 

In the last game I played (which ended in a crash - the first and only one I've encountered 37D) the work crews were actually semi-diligent about farming. The problem is they ignored a critical 'flatten terrain' command for over three days (and this was after I managed to accumulate a fair number of lower class laborers).

I said it once and I'll say it again: the job assignment system seems out of whack in this build. Maybe it's because colonists place higher priority on hauling goods now, but even when there was little or nothing to transprot I've seen colonists stand idly by while their fellow workers were busy tending crops, mining, etc. It's easily the most frustrating part of the game now as it is.

The 'seven dwarves' set up is surprisingly feasible (at least in New Antipodia) though I'd argue it slows the pace a too much at the beginning. Some people seem to like this but honestly, it gets kind of tedious. Let me put it this way; during the first four to five days of a new colony, I spend most of my time browsing the net, only occasionally checking on the game, waiting for colonists to erect the first building and additional colonists to arrive. I never did this in previous builds.

 

Everything peachy, except for one small fly in the ointment. At irregular intervals, one of my overseers gets teleported into the nearest body of water, which they cannot leave anymore, ultimately resulting in their starvation. I got rather fed up with having to spend all my colonist options on new overseers after a while. This save should show the problem:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/u4n4ubt9um81zr8/ClockworkEmpires-00015.zip?dl=0

 

Not sure I'm going to have the patience to get this one working. Was just achingly reaching the point when my first cabbage crop was about to pop, having taken food supplies as drop and eaten through them (was early day 4 I think) when 5 fishmen arrived and my three man squad completely ignored them. Despite having managed to mostly wall off three sides of the farm the fishy buggers made a beeline for the farm and destroyed every single plant.

It took so long to get to that point that right now I don't think I can be bothered trying again. I'll wait for the next patch I think!

 

Could the Forage Due To Hunger job get a distance limit, for how far outside the civilisation region colonists are willing to go?

 

So I've only have time to play 37d a little bit and I didn't really get past the early game, but here are my impressions. I got as far as Day 6, by which point I had 2 workshops (carpentry and house), 1 under construction (kitchen), 1 farm, and my population had reached 21, with 7 work crews (2 of which were military)

-smaller initial spawn encourages much lower-level management: individual stumps, clearing clumps of grass, etc.
-all overseers, nobody wants to clear terrain (may not necessarily be a bad thing - ability to flatten terrain reserved for later?)
-new smaller work crew interface
-I'm not a fan of the way assignments are filtered when assigning a Crew to a workshop
-it seems odd that a starting colony now has so many overseers and so few workers - I'd expect the opposite
-perhaps consider a smaller number of larger crews instead?
-progress bars while farming are also cool
-much easier to keep everyone fed in the very early game
-still encountering situation where colonists will hike a long way directly into the dark to grab meat
-suggestion: someplace I can see what day I'm on, because it's really hard to find in the ticker
-info button: day, month, population, colony outlook, empire opinion, etc.
-suggestion: mousing over mood icon in colonist list ought to show text description

 

Just a thought on the progress bars mentioned earlier. Perhaps showing them only at close zoom levels (like the names right now) would work better. Or only when you mouse over/select an individual?

 

I have a suggestion on the 7 dwarves ideal. If my thoughts of where you are trying to go with this are somewhat close;

Start with 5 overseers, one being an NCO and 2 soldiers. A single NCO just isn't cutting it alone.
-Keep Current pace of affairs for "bring on the colonists" or the other one ... sigh I forget names... where you can choose from criminals/artisan/group of soldiers.
-continue pace till day 10, then increase the time in-between when these windows/immegrants pop up by a day
-increase again at day 20
-increase again at day 30 so that you are looking at immegrants becoming available every 5 days (from each source) instead of every other
from here I would say don't increase any more (or evaluate how it goes) because even when only starting with 7 people, by day 25 you have 65+ people. With this type of balancing by day 25 you should have 45-50 and then be slowly increasing as time goes forward.
-perhaps an offset of this as well if you consider it -- bandits should have "fighting" ability and be able to join military ranks.

2nd suggestion.
If you wish to continue to have the farmer's be at the current pace of job completion, one fix could be to bring back old school farming. You plant, it grows, you harvest, instead of the multiple tiered growth. (just a thought)

below: welcome to fort Sethius -- 17 days to build.

 

Yea I had a similar problem in my first few tries. In this build the military is totally wonky, very rarely reacting to threats with any real urgency. My NCOs have twice become so scared that they were completely ineffectual - literally running away instead of engaging as my colony was destroyed around them.

I'm also having the old "walk 3 miles due east to collect random meat" bug. It happened to one of my soldiers who promptly got pummeled to death by a fishman.

There is a bug with paintings - there is a script error that I have been getting when they are made.

The above aside I have been seeing less colonists stuck in modules and generally the game is more stable. I also love the addition of progress bars for jobs. I would suggest that the progress bars could be different colours depending on the proficiency of the colonist at the task in hand. This would allow players to assess at a glance if our colony was being run efficiently or not.

 

So far this update is the most stable for me yet, reached 24 days and 30 colonists, but keeping them fed is an uphill struggle farming seems to take much too long and the amount of produce seems way low. Food is in the stockpile then immediately eaten by a colonist.

Also I'm overrun with overseers, perhaps an option to downgrade and overseer to a worker would help?

Finally in regard to the progress bars I agree they get in the way and would perhaps be better in the Jobs list next to each active job so it's easy to see at a glance when a job is nearing completion.

Loving the game and looking forward to what the next update adds to the mix. Just watching the colonists interact is hilarious ;-)

 

Hello,

I bought into the game last week after a friend introduced me to it. I loved that some of this game's influence comes from Caesar III and have been playing non-stop since.

I've made it into day 35 in 37D, but it has taken a lot of effort. I've lost hours from crashes or what not. I could typically figure out what was crashing by going back further and doing something different or just letting it play. It seems now where I am in this game that farming has completely stopped working, and so I was going to start over.

I'm more interested in the building aspects of the game, not the combat. Combat takes the most work for me and detracts from my interest. I understand it all needs tested. I keep using the five prestige points for the Army squad, but they tend to come without weapons, which makes them pretty useless. I started building muskets and pistols yesterday, but they don't come out quick enough to help this game. Is there a possiblity you can make a build or feature in the future that removes or disables the bandit/fishpeople so we can just focus on the other aspects of the game? I haven't been able to build everything yet because of other issues. For example, in this build, I've been waiting two weeks for a building to be destroyed. I don't think it is going to happen.

I understand if you would rather not do that so people test everything at once and together. I'd just rather focus on the building portion and would be happy to concentrate on finding bugs there.

Either way, thank you for building an amazing game! I look forward to seeing how it all takes shape.

 

speaking of food. Before "cooked food" used to sustain a colonist for a longer period of time before hunger returned. It doesn't seem to be the case anymore. (??)

 

Yep, that was changed several months back.

 

I think there is a happiness bonus for eating cooked food though, right? And further for eating it sitting down/at a table.

Just had another go at 37D. Did better with food with a lot of personnel devoted to farming. Just getting the ceramics up at day 8 or 9 or so (its too slow going as it is) when the same disaster befell me as the last effort: military completely ignored a bunch of fishmen who broke down my gabbing and destroyed my farms. Pah! Anyone else suffering this? Could it be a mac thing?

 

Military definitely seem to lose morale a bit too quickly. Also, while crop destruction pops an alert, it doesn't seem to raise an alarm.

Perhaps landing a killing hit should provide a morale boost for Military Trained, Brutish and Foolishly Brave colonists, with a smaller boost if attacking an enemy at the time it is defeated (I.e. within shooting distance at the time, not at the other side of the settlement while responding to alarm)?