ALPHA 47A ALPHA 47A NOW IN EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH

If you do, any chance you could make it purely optional as a game setting?

As it's kind of bad enough that the game already tells you what builds everything and everything else like that. Having the game also outright explaining what researches everything is kind of defeating the entire point of having any kind of content that isn't automatically shown to you upfront.

Just parading everything in plain sight would remove a huge chunk of the experience of the game for the sake of people who sit closer to the position where they want to optimise every click and map out everything ahead of time to make an efficient 'ABC routine'. So if you guys are going make everything exposed in order to cater to such an niche audience, then I'd ask that you also add a option at the exact same time for players to undo that decision in order to cater to other niche audiences who don't want that experience removed from the game for them.

 

Does it? I'm more likely to go into detailed guides and expend effort for an "ABC routine" (though it's more like Carpenter -> Kitchen -> Ceramics -> Metalworks, etc) if it isn't clearly delineated.

And surely by now, one wouldn't claim I wasn't going detailed enough or expending enough effort to post...

I wonder what's in the next version huh....

 

When setting foot on a new land with its own alien ecosystem, you don't really know in advance that you're about to discover potatoes and know they'll be edible rather than completely toxic and kill you in seconds, or that there will be this thing called bamboo that will have the properties making it practical for a building material.

That those giant beetles seen wandering around have behaviour characteristics that could actually allow them to be domesticated and used as farm labour that are more efficient that current domesticated animals generally used in the empire.

Or that a naturally growing type of berry in the region has properties that could act as a ingredient to produce a improved form of fertiliser.

If you're a 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th or whatever expedition then sure, there would be a gradual accumulation of knowledge from past attempts and that information to some limited degree could persist, but it would need to be discovered first and foremost before the exact applications become "Known Unknowns"....

In other words you might know ahead of time there's a possibility that you might encounter new avenues for improved fertilisers worth researching using local resources but you wouldn't know what exactly those resources would be, instead it would be weeks of studying individual material to start building speculative avenues on what material could have viable applications where, recording those properties and then further research time for trial and error experimentation before anything of application would come to a head.

Obviously, this wouldn't really make a 'fun' game system for people that want immediately results and expect to be stomping around with unlocks and streamlining their experience within the first week or two of the colony, however for those that still want some feeling of this discovery experience it really should be reflected in what is exposed to the player as options within the UI at the very least, so that the scientific discovery element doesn't lose a lot of its feeling that rather than making new discoveries and advancing science, instead all that's happening is you're unlocking already obtained knowledge that you the player knew about the second you clicked on "Modules", or "Crop options" in the UI for some magical reason that grants you some foresight beyond the realms of common man, and your colonists (heck the entire empire) were just too ignorant or dumb to realise what you already knew was possible through your presented options.

 

Exactly my point.

There are some people that really just want to condense everything down into a detailed "This is what you must be doing to be efficient" step-by-step process. With or without the overly exposed options where you can see what builds everything and what researches everything, they will find it all out write it down and tell others that also want to optimise every click/action what they need to be doing to achieve that.

And that's fine, but if Gaslamp are going to be overly exposing what can be discovered/researched for the sake of such preferences, then I'd ask for that exposure be made entirely optional as a game setting for those that don't give two flying craps about some arbitrary idea of "Efficient colony building" or following a step-by-step process, and instead want to just dive it, build and approach things on whims sometimes without being told "If you build this it will unlock B C and D and those things will allow you to research X Y and Z" instead really wanting to just embrace the chaos and see what comes out the other end and actually get a significant positive experience from being able to do that.

Because frankly, CWE has never come across as a "Overly exposed information game where you're meant to be highly efficient and only make correct choices" game.

It very much came across as something aiming closer to a DF experience, where you're not exposed to everything ahead of time, experimenting and discovering what does what and where it leads you, having undesired consequences occur from actions and all that jazz being a core part of the experience and the means to achieve that is largely by not having everything immediately exposed and by actively discouraging the player from being able to make exact detailed premeditated plans about what exactly you're going to do across a entire colonies life before you even get going just through the game elements themselves.

If you DO want to do that, then sure you can go to the DF Wiki or other resources and pull all the information out and have someone tell you what to do and what to expect.... but the game itself doesn't and shouldn't purely cater for that if the underlining experience is to be retained.

If Gaslamp want to make concessions to make it easier for those that thrive on efficiency, spreadsheet driven playstyles or just can't really get any positive experience from having anything negative or undesirable happen from their planning in a game, that's cool. Just give those that were drawn to the experience of fun through blind experimentation, loss and consequence the opportunity to still do that fully without having everything exposed to them for the sake of another niche playstyle appeal.

 

Ok, since it's come to this.

The "tech tree" as it is, is really really fast to get to where you want, generally speaking. The main reason people are slow to reach some useful things/mechanics is they slow themselves down.

It would be amusing if there was a proper just explicit tech tree (maybe with just ???s if you haven't unlocked a thing) where you didn't just have "1 or 2 bricks" sort of limit but a "make 20 planks before you begin starting on bricks". Like overseers, but more specific certain production gets you like a blueprint for a ceramics workshop "build with civilized bricks now!"

 

Ok, now you're really done it. Mistaking being prepared (or alternatively "knowing things") for just being a bad sport at games.

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The game basically early on gives you a flip switch "get owned by bandits" "don't get owned by bandits".

For whatever reason, the bandits don't then force you to 1. pay tribute regularly to them, 2. constantly do diplomacy for them or 3. get shot at.

Now I was thinking that the event system would force you to pick options like

• "Please take anything you want"
• "here, have some mid tier goods"
• "you can have some necessities I guess *grumble*"
• "no. what you gonna do about it?"

with appropriate loss of standings for some options, leading you to really feel that at some point you use a mix of bribery/cowering, diplomacy or just let them come and shoot them until they die or respect you.

But the switch only needs to be flicked once, when you get the Foreign Office up. It's a really easy choice to make and then forget.


Same with fishpeople, from being "goblins" that only attacked now you generally want to be Friends all the time... though sometimes the raiders will spawn, and they will attack. Amusingly currently they and the traders just endlessly fight around my colony, not that I (or my colonists for that matter) really care.

And the fishpeople do drop items for me when they visit. Or maybe they come to trade but drop the items to fight people which lets me claim them, I have no idea.


I was amused when my first carbine squad stood around watching a ravenous herd eat my crops. Not that it did much though, since I had like 20+ days of buffered food. I actually thought those events would be stronger, but except for "1NCO only" cases (and even then, you can add 4 people with knives) they don't do much. And even then, they don't do much, I was surprised.

 

That wasn't what I said, I was listing 3 individual types of preference that came to mind as examples that might prefer the additional exposure as a tool to play how they prefer to play, it wasn't listing them as all one mutual inclusive characteristic of one type of player who would get something from the change, hence the use of the word 'or' to illustrate it was a series of individual styles.

So read it as:

Those that either:

1) Thrive on efficiency
2) Enjoy spreadsheet driven playstyles
3) or just can't really get any positive experience from having anything negative or undesirable happen from their planning in a game.

Would certainly be better catered to by overly exposing technology advancement routes upfront... and then continuing on to point out there are other styles especially those drawn to how CWE came across initially who would have a significant part of the experience removed for them if the change was made solely catering toward those kinds of preferences, so a optional toggle to enable/disable the abundance of exposed technologies would allow both to still get their preferred experience.

And yes, there are indeed people who very much get nothing but negative and undesirable experiences from a game where things don't go exactly their way each session. But that doesn't in any way mean I was saying that any of those 3 are 'bad sports at game' nor that 1 is 2 is 3.

But seriously, why is there this perceived sense that some offence is being taken by pointing out that not everyone is driven to play to the highest degree of efficiency possible or alternatively to avoid negative consequences by having an abundance of decision making information of what leads to where and what unlocks will be available ahead of time presented up front?

All that was being said was asking if Gaslamp do expose technologies that aren't yet researched for the sake of knowing what decisions lead where ahead of time before doing something (which is what the initial request was ultimately asking for), that there should be an optional toggle introduced for that exposed information to allow those that don't fall within those niche styles of play and instead fall under other niche styles to still get something from an experience that would otherwise be removed for them.

 

I don't want to have to play the game the same way everyone else does in order to have success.

But if you come from a society that has developed those kinds of things, you are more likely to poke around and look for their equivalents in a new place. There has to be some kind of middle ground between exposing everything that is possible and knowing nothing at all.

 

Would it be possible to hide away aspects of the game that are not attainable rather than greying them out? Upon reaching the basic requirements, like building a ceramic workshop could then unlock buildings and modules that required bricks. Items with multiple dependencies would require all boxes check before showing up.

Is there any plan to incorporate something like the civopedia into the final product?

 

Indeed, something such as an indication that later on there may be research advancements of 'something' for areas that are tied to already present parts of your society would be a good middle ground.

So immediately it would be speculated that there could be advancements to agricultural efficiency that could be discovered through research of the local ecology... what exact aspect of the ecology being an unknown until the first discovery... it could be some kind of plant life, or researching beetles may lead to the discovery that a specific organ they have produces an substance that boosts crop growth... but until the research is undergone all you'd really know is that there's a possibility that later on you'll find new agricultural methods.

For areas that fall under the category of 'introducing new concepts to your society that previously didn't exist at all', those would fall under the realm of blind research... they're concepts so far enough removed that scientists can't even speculate on the potential discovery.

If Gaslamp wanted to make things more interesting from a chaotic/unpredictable standpoint they could even partially randomise what is a catalyst for research unlocks tied to the overworld generation. So in one world a Beetle organ sourced substance might be found to boost crop growth, in another overworld generated it might be a wild plant.

This could be done by having researchable objects have a series of associated research tags based on the type of object it is, when the world is created each research item is randomly assigned a research object that has the associated tag.

Personally I'd love something like that, but it does introduce some degree of only partially predictable behaviour that can't be accounted for absolutely between one player and the next (or even one world and the next) only the listing of tags tied to each research object and documenting what options have the potential to unlock a given technology could be created... so it would be a question of if it's possible does it add enough of a net benefit to the typical player the game is targeting, and if so should it be enforced? or should it be an optional world generation option?

Even with some degree of unknown to the research advancements though, I'd personally still like the idea of entirely blind research from a UI perspective as a purely optional feature. Something like have each UI element that reflects a scientific unlock tagged with a 'research' attribute, then have the option enable/disable a part of the UI behaviour that controls if it displays research attributed elements before they're unlocked or not.

Edit:

I really like this idea, to build off the last paragraph of my original post with this more appealing broad application idea, perhaps rather than have the toggle apply purely to research, instead break it down to a more base level attribute, and have the UI elements have a 'locked' and 'unlocked' attribute.

Then each thing has its prerequisite to what flips the state from locked to unlocked.

Building a carpentry would 'unlock' the UI elements that represent common carpentry sourced items.

Building a laboratory would 'unlock' the UI elements that represent speculative technological advances in already present areas... E.G. There's a potential improved fertiliser catalyst that we may discover.

And then researching a specific technology would 'unlock' the UI elements that represent the actual discovery object itself.



If you don't want that kind of discovery for whatever reason, then changing the game setting flags the UI behaviour to display unlocked items.

 

Mmm, especially amusing flavor text.

Sword of the stars style, though that was more on a random tech tree

I was going to discourse on minimum required capability (imagine if not getting enhanced crops by day 20 just killed you, of course that wouldn't make sense) or on state contingent strategies (standard: 2:10 ratio, enhanced, 2:11ratio, as right now with "overseer skill"). But hey, there's a reason I only use the empty loadout and write way more than just "do this one thing perfectly like a 4gate strategy"

But it's more fun to see the randomness (how many branches could it have, oooh the variations) and then write the state contingent strategies or work out the minimum required capability.

Loads a' Fun.

 

Yeah, there's something wrong with airship mast construction.

 

Are cults still working? My cult seeded colonists appear to be trying to recruit, (cult bubble overhead as they chat), but I don't see the usual rejection notice in the news ticker, nor any indication they discussed cults in their character panels.

 

Had a crash whitin the first 5 minutes. While setting up a building.

 

I made a ring of flowers around my gun pile. It's so pretty

 

Had another crash. I do seem to be a magnet for that kind of stuff at times.

 

29 Jan. '16
Today, while the majority of the military was engaged in a training exercise, a Commemorative Landmine was dropped from the sky directly upon them, instantly killing the commander and severely injuring the remaining soldiers. It cannot be coincidence. Has this eldritch horror gained a foothold within the glorious Empire itself?! It is watching us. It is everywhere. Cog help us.

 

Hmm, ok. So 25 research points for the 5 projects.

The farming ones are definitely worth your while, it seems to increase your farmers' productivity quite a lot** and should make generating the food for your 100-colonist paradises that much easier.


**I estimate my 10 farmers (both farms under Jolly Good overseers) are producing around 80 raw food a day after all three research upgrades! Before that I wouldn't have thought it passed 70 even with Expert overseers.