1. Will there be a happiness factor that affects the colonists, such as dead friends, bad smells, and lack of pleasure, booze, nice sculptures, or fancy hats? Will unhappiness cause loss of productivity, lack of sex drive, and suicide? 2a. Is babymaking a planned feature, or is the world of CE too gritty and dangerous and population expansion only left to non-baby/child immigrants/colonists? (Since DF is a main inspiration, and babies are only dying since the ASCII allows for it, I'm thinking no.) Incubation/Birthing sheds could help, where pregnant women go to birth, then deposit their fetus/newborn to expedite maturation. Adults would pop out, without any skill or denomination, of course. 2b. If children, Orphans as free, minimum resource consuming workforce? 3. I had seen a screenshot in the PC gamer interview showing concept art for the Poet job class. Will the poets be housed in coffee/booze shops and improve the moods of colonists with inspiring words? Will these poets, being in a bad mood themselves, write dark and nasty poems and depress listening colonists? 4. Will there be other such 'artistic' jobs? 5a. Will there be certain structures or objects that can be built that will increase or decrease the happiness of colonists (Stronghold series, you know, dancing bears, maypoles)? 5b. Bears? 6. Is the political system entirely monocratic, with a single 'leader', or multiple 'council/nobles' ruling, or will popular elections play a role? Will the governing be able to improve the mood or productivity of colonists by visiting their places of work or play (Tropico/Evil Genius style), or will they exist only to drive the player to build bigger and more lavishly, by setting requirements for themselves, and mandating complicated crafts (DF style)? Or both? 7. Will weapons and crafts have quality? Will only artisans be able to produce high-quality crafts? Will factories produce simple, base quality crafts, and will quality of the structure and optional add-ons to the factories increase quality (Drying shed from that one screenshot, lumber mill?)? ^[In regards to 7]^ I know this one was sort of answered in the day-to-day work logs thread, with Mr. Developer explaining the difficulties in tracking individual qualities of muskets, and the difficulty in creating 'uniforms' and micromanagement of the armies. I also understand that they are shooting for a simpler game with less complexity than DF, but I believe that making a great roguelike sandbox requires a mash of gameplay depth and complexity, ease of access, and a very efficient interface and approach to learning. If item quality is taken, I believe that more depth will be taken in comparison to efficiency gained in the interface. This game has a massive and delicious scope, and I'm really excited for it, but I'm worried that details and complexities like this may be sacrificed too often during development, pushing this game towards a people-who-thought-Dwarf Fortress-was-way-too-complicated-but-enjoyed-the-concept-and-are-bored-of-Minecraft pleaser, which has flattened the tons of minor factors and little details that makes DF great. Now, I don't mean to accuse the developers of anything, and they seem really enthusiastic and good at what they do, but my heart wants this to be a perfect game for me, while my quasi-rational brain knows that it will be made for everyone, which makes me worried and sad because I've never been more excited and interested in a video game in my life (ehyeahhmm). This whole thread is just me trying to squeeze more info-juice out of the developers to keep my worries away and my lust sated. If these questions have already been answered, please berate and or link me.
I was under the impression that the player is pretty much the ruler. We know for sure that their will be orphans. They gotta come from somewhere. Overall good questions
Yeah I looked back over the introductory flier that names the player as Junior Bureaucrat, and it kind of rules out a DF type king that would come to the colony, and places the player in a sort of Tropico-esque position where there is a in-game character representation of yourself (probably not though, dying and all is (most likely) common, and the in-game player-character representation's death would also be common(hey)) in addition to playing 'god/hivemind'. I am still hoping for some kind of upper, non-working class that just sneers at dirty people and demands pretty things, like fancy hats. Orphans were mentioned in the introductory flier, but i'm talking bout that sweet sweet cheap orphan labourer force that child-powers my dangerous and smog-filled fancy hat factories.
