ALPHA 48B NOW IN EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH

Woot trying it now

 

Woah, was starting to think it wouldn't make it. Crisis averted!

 

I love waking up on a saturday and see this.

 

flax and cloth are gone? so does that mean beds won't need cloth anymore?

 

Huh, flax and cloth removed... huh... well that's interesting.

If I have to solve set theory questions or number theory questions to play CE though, ehhh

Presumably this puts an end to my spamming of Ornate Doors on everything. Oh well~

 

Here are my initial impressions of A48B, based on a couple hours of play:

-collapsible work crews are nice
-clicking 'show colonists' button repeatedly while paused will crash the game
-collapsible event log is nice, but placement feels weird, maybe I just need to get used to it
-come on, ESC really ought to bring up the Options menu
-collapsible workshop and module menus are nice, also take some getting used to

-I don't really like fields of predetermined shapes, unfortunately
-additional info panel for farming is nice, though
-plants feel a whole lot slower now - e.g. my initial maize crop took, I think, 4 days to mature
-so, 'harvest labour' represents the total amount of labour required to grow from seed to harvest?
-I'm sure I'll have more well-developed feedback re: crops when I've played some more

-spiffy new backgrounds for work crew menu, nice!
-new colonists are once again unassigned, I approve
-no more 'days elapsed' counter?

Beds are currently made with 2 planks. I assume that will change when flax is put back in the game.

 

Well I'm guessing, but there's probably the following:

So yeah...

Oh cabbage has setup of 10, and perharvest of 60, but output is only 8, so it's less efficient**

This does kill relatively early farming (you'd be best just waiting until you get immigration once or twice and then stack a farm with 5 people at one go. There's not much gain having small starting farms, the fact you need to "fill up" the full amount to get anything would suggest going all-in at once.

Eg: starting with only 1 lower-class, you could have 2 people. But it makes more sense perhaps to have them forage, and then once (day 2 or 3?) you get immigration, which should be +2 lower class, you just put all of them into farming.


**I could go into detail, but to get 16 units of food (which isn't much at all!) you have to pay more labor for cabbage than maize. At your starting 6 people+immigration this means you're really much better off just starting with maize which was the case anyway before so it didn't change much....


Our favorite: wheat.
Setup: 50
Per harvest: 300
Output: 50

So looking at long run of 6 actions per output... but wait, more walking (larger) and massive size means those who hates wheat only might have a win here, might recommend maize-only now.

 

My initial impressions:

- When clicking on the "Crop Fields" button, the information comparing the effective yields of each crop type should be listed, as it was before. Also, perhaps the tooltips for each crop type should include the field size ("7x7" for example).

- I much preferred the custom field sizes. I thought it was a great feature that helped the game stand out, and it fit in perfectly with the custom layout of the buildings. I would like to either see a return to all custom field sizes, or keep the default field sizes and add a custom field size button that allows smaller fields than the default field size for each crop type with a decreased yield. I can imagine a return to all custom field sizes and just have a suggested field size listed in the tooltip for each crop type.

- The Kitchen feels like it could use a brick oven that doesn't need metal for repairs and has more uses between repairs than the stone oven. Perhaps make it so the stone oven can't cook bread?
- I like the module requirements for the difference recipes. However, when the necessary modules aren't available, please still include the recipe name in the tooltip. Currently it does not list the recipe name. So, instead of just saying "Requires Spice Rack and Oven!" it would say "Cook Cabbage Stew" then skip a line, and then say "Requires Spice Rack and Oven!"

- When placing a foundation for a new building, it would be great if we could click on blue squares to remove them (maybe only if they're along the outer edge so we can't create holes in the middle) in the same way we can currently click to add additional squares.
- The Cancel button doesn't work in 48A or 48B.

The Work Crews menu UI is the most noticeable improvement so far.
- An icon or background color to indicate that a work group is military would be nice. When they're expanded, it's easy to tell from the uniform, but when collapsed there's currently no way to tell.

 

FYI, I think all useable modules will break after exactly 30 uses.

 

Well, that doesn't seem logical... In any case, the rest of that statement still applies.

 

It appears this build allows the placement of modules on top of each other. I had a colonist trapped in a new building for days until I realized I shouldn't have a Sign Hanger on the same square as the door (it actually looked better there than in the next square over). I then tested placing a brewing vat on top of my carpentry workbench and that worked.

 

Oh my... The Demolish Zone button for farm plots isn't working. I can't remove any farm plots for any crop type.

 

It's really useful, you can stack sign hangers on windows. So even small buildings can have pretty good building quality.

 

If that's intended then that's fine, but at the moment it's also allowing module stacking, which blocks the access points and prevents them from being used. I can see the sign hanger stacking on the door being allowed, but if so, then it should not block people from going through the door. I'm sure the Devs do not want people stacking four stoves/wooden vats/whatever on top of one another.

 

The requirement for sand (for the chemistry workbench) is a pretty big bottle neck for the production of lacquered wood, as your colonists start demanding for a chapel fairly early I think that this needs looked at in some way (perhaps start with a single bushel of sand or give stone nodes a chance of dropping sand?)

When bandits become neutral the stuff lying around in their camps aren't forbidden (at least I presume that's where all the bronze cogs and pickled fungus in my stockpile came from....)

The beetle invasion doesn't seem to work properly. The beetles seem reluctant to actually eat crops and my soldiers seem reluctant to kill them. For my first invasion the beetles just wandered around my colony while my soldiers just watched them, even if I gave a hunt order. This may have been something to do with the growth stage of the crops, nothing was visible when they arrived but when the crops were visible they just ignored them. The second invasion worked closer to intended but there was still some reluctance on the part of my soldiery to kill them.

Quite a lot of stutter. when my first crop of maize matured I got a slow down (and if the maize was on screen in general there was noticeable but minor lag.

I also had a couple of instances with a significant stutter (not sure what caused it, possibly crop related) which cuased everthing to go very fast for a couple of seconds after it unfroze.

Work crews seem to randomly go on strike, one of my overseers was so happy she was spontaneously dancing yet was on strike as can be seen:


I saved the game (with great alacrity) but there is no save file although there is a replay file after the inevitable crash:


Still crashing after around an hours playtime.
This has been a 'feature' of the last 4-5 builds and it is becoming increasingly irritating.

 

I love the UI update - best thing since Christmas.
Though, I would prefer farms that were not fixed-sized

The idea of workshop-specific backgrounds for the carpenters and farmers in the Work Crew drop-down menu works very well. I suggest that it is introduced for all types of workshops.

Game crashes
When the carpentry workshop starts assembly of a mineshaft module, after having fetched the 3 planks for the module, the game crashes. This is also reported in the crash thread here.

If you click on the barbershop, after the construction of the barbershop is completed, the game crashes.

Other issues
When you issue a 'chop down' command for a single tree, the 'chop down job icon' does appear somewhere else than on the tree
It seems (I am not totally sure) that the icon always appears where the initial (at the start of the game) parachute food-drop took place.

Sometimes people stand or walk at the same spot until they die of hunger.
(also seen in pre-48B releases)

In the Work Crews drop-down menu it would be nice to have some sign/colour/whatever indication of the overseer who is military, so that they can be easily found even when collapsed
(I love the 48B Work Crews drop-down menu)

The 'workers certificate' can no longer be produced at any workshop

Mostly, though not always, no 'clear terrain job icon' appears when you issues the following commands:
- clear green grass command
- clear leafy green shrub
- clear pine stump
- clear aspen stump
- clear aspen sapling

No 'mine surface node job icon' appears when you issue one of the following commands:
- Mine clay nodes
- Mine rhyolite boulders