BETA 54B BETA 54B: UWAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHH... SUCH TERRIFYING POWER

Discussion in 'Clockwork Empires General' started by Nicholas, Sep 21, 2016.

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  1. Alavaria

    Alavaria Member

    Well now you can build way too many Carpentry Workbenches and Stone Ovens far too early without the game beating you up over it...
     
  2. Tikigod

    Tikigod Member

    Giving it a shot... my god is doing anything with a workshop now a huge convoluted mess.

    Build a carpentry, then you have to build basic bench. This does practically nothing except make planks and makes a 2nd type of bench.

    You build the second type of bench and this gives you some options to make other types of benches and the like, including a 3rd bench that you then build that then lets you make decor.


    And this is level of break down carried across to every single workshop.... Ceramics... you have the kiln, then you have about 3 different types of tables to make different types of things... do you need an assembly table in your ceramics if you have one in your carpentry? Do they just make the same things or do they cover different items based on the type of workshop? Who the fuck knows.... just build everything blindly, hope you're doing something practical and cross your fingers whilst you try figure out why you need 37 different types of workbench in your colony now.... of course you can't go to crazy trying things as now you have a support limit to such constructions in your colony based on the number of overseers you can maintain relative to the housing present....

    *sighs*

    Edit: Getting a distant Peter Molyneux vibe of "People are enjoying my game and doing something I don't really want them to do so much. So I'm going to make doing what they enjoy time consumingly annoying and unenjoyable until they play the way I wanted... that way I can assure longevity.".
     
    Last edited: Sep 21, 2016
  3. Manamoo

    Manamoo Member

    Haven't gotten too far in...but I'm playing again and doing my happy fishy people dance...so far. LOL. Only one glitch I've seen is that the Booze Vat was greyed out on the workbench, I still put it up and it was red, and it did get built.

    Also, a bit of trouble scrolling on the overseer list...it keeps moving and you can just smoothly scroll up and down.

    Holy moly on the bandit attacks...they got a LOT harder since the last time I played...I lost a lot of guys. One of my dead guys just laid there on the ground...I didn't see a notification that my graveyard was full, but I put a second in and BAM...they buried him.

    Love the colonists going bat Sh!t crazy from despair...running around...too funny. Oh and I think one of my Overseers is just too comfy in their home to leave...hasn't starved to death yet, but has been there for a number of days.

    I am going to restart now that I've gotten my feet wet on the changes I did miss, and start over tomorrow. I wish I had more time to play tonight...peanut gallery is having fun, too. Hoping to see what the Office Supplies are all about...

    Oh and I'm not sure, but when were cots not allowed to be built in the barracks? I found that a bit odd....barracks = sleeping quarters for military. I get that you have the population control via the housing...but I thought the barracks would still be allowed cots and it not count towards the population control...although I'm not a programmer so I have no clue how that would work...I remember you could put cots in any building...which I thought was funny, puts working from home into a whole new perspective. :p
     
  4. Alavaria

    Alavaria Member

    Time to write a tech tree of items...

    Hmm... so many modules...

    Probably the same time cots were only allowed to be built in houses. The real question isn't why not there, by why there
     
    Last edited: Sep 21, 2016
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  5. Mikel

    Mikel Waiting On Paperwork From The Ministry. Forever.

    To whomever complained about the carpentry bench having too many recipes. Thanks. :p
     
  6. tHe_silent_H

    tHe_silent_H Member

    So noticed a new building in the modules section, the steam knight manufactory modules have dev requirement to be built, naturally, workshop doesn't appear in buildings, so i'm guessing this accidentally slipped in

    PS: can we get the arsenal back for building weapon lockers and ammunition instead of a billion workbench types

    Also, whywere carpets nerfed harder than rugs considering they take up 6 floor-spots but only give 2 quality now.
     
    Last edited: Sep 21, 2016
  7. Unforked

    Unforked Member

    I hear what you're saying, but I like this new way. The big reason: Less scrolling.

    With the old system, the carpentry workbench did EVERYTHING, so what you did was build 3 or 5 benches at the start of the game, staff them, then have one or two always focus on planks, while the rest you'd have to constantly scroll through an absurdly massive list of every item the workbench could make, which was pretty much everything - It was painful on the eyes really. I mean, we have to do this A LOT in the game.

    Breaking up those lists is worth having to build different benches in my opinion.
     
    Last edited: Sep 22, 2016
  8. Tikigod

    Tikigod Member

    If the objective behind the half dozen or however many layers of benches is to make the order lists cleaner, much better ways that could have been done I'd say.

    For example introduce a low end 'manufacturing table' for producing workshop-exclusive items like planks and basic tier items of decor and tier 1 production modules (Keeping it to 1 per workshop type).

    Then as the carpentry is upgraded you can produce more complex machinery like the power saw for later tiers of carpentry exclusive modules of that related tier, and apply the same logic to other workshops.... the point being it's still the same type of module just of a different technology grade.

    Lastly the creation of general purpose 'hand held' objects like bric-a-brac and such, then use a generic purpose bench that all appropriate workshops share.


    Would beat having benches that do little more than make more benches which then make other benches which then only make one type of item... and having to kind of guess if you even need a certain type of bench in other workshops to produce something new or if it's just crossover.

    Plus would give a better sense of 'progression' and some indication on where you might want to focus advancing the colony beyond just 'Build more buildings' if you actually had to make do with crude woodwork related decor before you could even get access to make rugs or other such things of a higher decor-tier.


    Though the more obvious (but more effort involved) approach would have been to just throw in filter buttons in what type of objects are listed in a modules drop down. So you disable decor and drop down the list on a production module and no decor orders are shown, like the stockpile filter. And then avoid making a mess of the existing clean and self-explanatory setup that was already in place.
     
    Last edited: Sep 21, 2016
  9. Alavaria

    Alavaria Member

    It used to be possible to do so much with so few overseers but now... eh well I guess it is sort of ok as you can build enough to get +8 more overseers (for example) much faster than the earlier production point based systems. But still, I liked running with very few overseers.
     
  10. Tikigod

    Tikigod Member

    hmmm also just noticed you can't even control what types of activities any workcrew does?!?

    What the frell is going on? :eek:
     
  11. jotwebe

    jotwebe Gained the People's Ovation and Fame Forever

    I guess that's the philosophy of "don't let the players do micro if you don't want them to micro the Dickens out of it". I suppose you could watch what a crew is doing and then assign them laborers depending on the size of the job, but I rather enjoy not having to worry about it. Last version I did spend a bit more time then was fun managing specialized construction/forestry/hauling crews, so I rather approve.
     
  12. Nicholas

    Nicholas Technology Director Staff Member

    Unless, as has historically happened in the past, somebody didnt' tell me anything, work crew filters should still exist. I wonder if a bug snuck in or something? We did some last minute scrollbar code changes.
     
  13. Tikigod

    Tikigod Member

    Just ran across what I can only assume is a bug with the 'Stahlmarkian Rogue' event where the event notification appeared but it's empty and clicking it does nothing even leaving the game unpaused running for a time:

    [​IMG]

    Can't upload any of the save, console or replay to this post as any of them return the error that the file size is too large for the server to process, and even zipped it's 3.98mb which can't be attached. So the zip with the 3 files can be found here.
     
  14. Rentahamster

    Rentahamster Member

    That's what I thought too, hah.
     
  15. Manamoo

    Manamoo Member

    @Alavaria Thanks for the info...like I said I haven't played in awhile, so I was out of the loop.

    @Nicholas Peanut gallery and I haven't seen any work crew filters...may have a sneaky ninja bug. Can't control the military at all, Peanut Gallery is having an issue right now, that the workers keep running away from something further away from the colony and since he can't direct the military to go and check it out, they are in a bit of a vicious loop...workers go up, run away...Not being able to control the military makes the bandit attacks just brutal...especially since population control has come into play.

    I like this patch...so far...again didn't get a chance to get into it as much as I'd like, pesky sleep...but I do think maybe easing up on the Overseer control would be a nice thing...especially since every bandit attack I've had thus far has left me with one less overseer every time...which then puts me into a stalemate because of not enough of them to run the buildings, gather the materials to build the middle class housing to get another Overseer. I do like the population control, don't get me wrong...but I think it needs to be eased up just a bit for the Overseers...not the labourers...that seems to be very balanced.
     
  16. Unforked

    Unforked Member

    Fish People are oblivious to being on fire. It still hurts them, but they just continue casually walking if they're flamed by an inspector.

    Haven't been able to test fire on colonists yet to see if it's the same.
     
  17. Alavaria

    Alavaria Member

    Yeah, can't order your soldiers to clear out a bandit camp, or in anyway prepare for things either.

    I wonder if bandits attacking buildings (like say, a Bunkhouse wall) triggers military alarm...
     
  18. Unforked

    Unforked Member

    Would be nice to at least have drag-select for hunting, especially for beetle herds and other large groups of animals. Individually clicking each animal is a bit much.
     
  19. dbaumgart

    dbaumgart Art Director Staff Member

    Dude! It sucks to have negative imagined motives ascribed to designs we're working out. I understand the content of what you are saying and I totally get why you feel the way you do. But please understand that our goal is to make a fun game for both you and for everyone else. We don't want to make your life suck and take your time for no reason. And we're generally willing to talk about about a lot of the decisions that go into these systems (unless there's some PR/business thing that holds us back).

    (Edit: I don't think even Peter Molyneux wants to do that, but that's a whole other topic.)

    Just... keep in mind that we're not in this to make you suffer for no reason. (Edit: except for the late-game eldritch stuff, that's totally in the game to make you suffer for no reason.)

    AHEM, moving along.

    Let's talk about the design going on here.

    The problem: scrolling through a ton of products kinda sucks because
    • it is physically awkward to scroll and it is frustrating to have the scrollbar reset apparently randomly, or mis-perform somehow (though scrollbars were much improved in a very recent fix)
    • the long scrollbar hides a lot of important recipes deep in the list,
    • and it puts every category of object into one list with only order as a means of organization.
    Splitting the categories of products into (basic wood stuff), (modules), and (decor) means
    • you don't have to go through a giant scrollbar to find stuff
    • categories are organized by their purpose in the game
    • (and, minor point, it makes workplace area and organization more important: placing modules is part of the game that we want CE to be about so making that important serves that goal)
    So, that in mind, I get the impression that you don't feel we've been totally successful at selling this change and we're cool with talking about that.

    I will note that there are cases where we have distinct modules for products and no one bats an eye -- the Kitchen for example has ovens for cooking food and vats for brewing drinks. The Metalworks has a forge for metal products and separate smelters/kilns for ingots and charcoal.

    Here's a series of questions:
    • Why is this module separation okay in other buildings?
    • Is it a matter of flavour and visuals, ie. you accept the logic that a brewing vat and oven do different things?
    • Would the answer then be to distinguish the Carpentry modules better?
    • (Is part of it a negative reaction to changes to a system you already are comfortable with and know well?)
    ... Ah, and I see you did a follow-up post. Your proposal sounds, essentially, like you want to split recipes up into different benches based on tech-level rather than use-category. Is that so different? (& The additional parts involve splitting decor into tech levels, which adds more complexity to that system; let's call that a distinct proposal from the workbench organization.)
    ... We did discuss it in the office for a bit, don't have a strong conclusion quite yet.

    (Will now reply to other posts in additional comments.)
     
  20. dbaumgart

    dbaumgart Art Director Staff Member

    Is it that you want to prioritize hunting certain groups of animals? Granted, it can be difficult to click on individuals, especially if the game is unpaused.

    (We may have a solution here that does not involve drag-clicking, just want to get at the underlying motive. And I don't want to make any promises before I've got something working.)

    (see previous comment)

    Logged as OC-5608.,"make Fishpeople flip out when they're on fire".


    Regarding Workcrew Filters and the RALLY command:

    The lack of the rally command is known. Waiting on some infrastructure code to hook this back up -- it will be in the Barracks so you can send a squad to rally somewhere. This has nothing to do with the old workcrew filter buttons, which were removed and not useful -- the rally command was just placed next to the filter buttons incidentally (and caused confusion).


    Clarity of gameplay, basically.
    Allowing any module in any building makes it less clear what the gameplay function of buildings are and begs the question of why modules aren't being used properly or having certain effects when placed in innappropriate buildings -- then we'd have to add a whole new set of feedback via tooltips/alerts/something to make it clear why this was happening and what a player can do about it. Basically it'd allow for a whole huge set of error cases that we'd have to make nice UX for when the behaviour can be lopped off by simply disallowing the action.

    For cots in particular, that they must be placed in houses to get their bonus effects. If we allow cots in Barracks, even though it fulfills the technical definition of the role of a Barracks, would dilute the clarity of these game mechanics and cause frustration by making it look like the game doesn't play by a consistent set of rules.

    Thanks for the report! I believe if the Stahlmarkian rogue does something bad in the first 30 seconds after spawning it can throw the event off. Logged as OC-5609 to add additional checks for problems in the event start.
     
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