Earliest Access Feedback and Reactions

This mechanic has never worked for me in games before. It doesn't really work for CE either, Alpha Centauri probably had the best effort at it but it's easier when you're using ambient drones that barely count as music.

On the other hand, I don't think it detracts that much either. Probably not worth reworking it at this point.

 

Phew, that's good to know. Although, it's strange that it heats the card more than Battlefield, and dropping to 720p made a 10° difference.

I'm starting to be scared over just how much power those cabbages might hold now D:

 

I'm guessing the game isn't optimized yet. I had some slowdown when I tried to run a game, so I'll just wait until there are more options in the graphics settings that I can turn off.

 

i don't have the funds for this earliest of accesses, but i wanted to wish you best of luck and congrats on getting this far!

 

So far so good, I really hope that the people become more dynamic and self-sufficient. Also I would imagine that in later updates I will be able to save, choose my starting location, name, settlement name, etc.

Besides the slight bouts of lag and after 2 hours the game abruptly crashed, which I figure this is due to the game still being in beta. However with that said my GTX670 mini handles the game very well (besides the slight issues I mentioned previously) and the game was enjoyable.

 

I have watched these forums since the PC Gamer article came out but I did turn a blind eye to any "useful" info on how to actually play the game so as not to be tainted by insider info when I first loaded Clockwork Empires. I wanted to see through the eyes of a player who just purchased the game without conducting any research. My biggest first impression is I am clearly an idiot because nothing made sense. However after a few games I can now confidently say I am only mostly and idiot because many things have been made clear by clicking on everything and seeing what happens. What follows is a list of what is still confusing or just annoyances.

Aurochs
The cows overran my camp because I didn't know how to hunt them for the first few games. Perhaps the tooltip could indicate that they can be hunted with a hunting job? They also make me sad that I can't have a Rancher corral them for milking and skinning and breeding later.

Hunting Jobs
Really hard to figure out without really looking for it. Why can we click on a tree to be cut down but not select which animals we want hunted? It's a kill everything in site or kill nothing at all kinda gig, would much prefer it to work more like the other jobs. If zoning gets implemented (clear this zone/forage this zone) perhaps we can also have Hunt this Zone, or Keep this Zone clear of animals type commands.

Workshops
Some items in the workshop menu can't be read due to the text working itself under the + button. "Make Lingonberry Perserves" is one cooking example. Also can't wait for the - button to work. Often when queueing multiple products, the Production Queue spazzes out and as far as I can tell all production stops until you clear the queue and start over again.

Announcements
Love the icon that appears above the chat box to let you know someone important just happened (another innocent fishman wandered into my camp) but I want click on the icon and have my screen center on the Exciting Event least I miss it!

Supply Drops and Immigration.
Often broken for me, however it also looks like I sometimes just miss the opportunity to pick supplies or immigrates. Can we set up a default choice so when I'm distracted I don't completely miss the drops?

Bodies
Once killed my people's bodies (when not eaten or buried) start the Decomposing job yet never decompose. Fish People keep the same job going as they had when they died and also never decompose. My people often have enough food so my camps are filling up with dead fish bodies that I can't remove. I do love that when I build a cemetery someone will bury my loyal subjects neatly in a grave. I just want to do something with the Fishmen too, a mass grave to much to ask? A pyre to burn them on? They have to start smelling at some point..

Fish People
Are they only for killing? I feel guilty when a lone Fishman who was clearly just Wandering around enjoying his day gets instantly slaughtered despite no aggressive actions. His fishman body just lays there endlessly wandering, never to disappear, reminding me of his innocence. The guilt is Maddening!

My People's Emotions
I love that they show emotions. Sadness, Happy Dance and Anger have all been seen but I don't know why. My cook is Happy Dancing near a dead Fishman, is he happy that Fishman is dead? Happy with being a cook? I can't tell. I look though his memories and all I see is weird conversations and the horror of seeing someone turned into food. Does this make my cook happy? My logger is Angry but at what? He ate bread and was angry. Was the bread stale from sitting in a stockyard all day? His memories only show that he has recently talked about the monarchy and he's a hat fancier. Is he angry that he has no Hat??

Memories
Currently they are cute if obscure. Please implement selfness in them. "I engaged in Cult Activities" for the guys actually engaging, not just witness accounts for evil done with their own two hands. "I killed for Frontier Justice! For the Queen!" A loyal solder should be proud to serve in this manner, not horrified like all the witnesses.

Needs
I know my people need to eat, sometimes they complain of being hungry, sometimes they eat Unthinkable Things but I can't see it until it's dire. I also can't tell what makes them happy, if they want/need gin, if the epicureans are happy with the food selection, if the adventurers are getting out enough and if my hat fanciers are happy with their headwear. I do play the Sims alot so maybe I expected more based on the character traits and happy dances but if this is going to be fleshed out more I would be a very happy camper.

Having said all that, if anyone is still reading, I am very excited about the possibilities in this game!

 

As far as the events list goes, I've gotten used to how the Anno series does it, which is left-click to focus on the source of the event, right-click to clear it.

 

I was kind of waiting on the ability to save games to continue playing, but then again, I knew what I signed up for, so...
I took build 29 for a spin, and here's a few things off the top of my head:

• Selecting multiple objects simultaneously is a godsend! Makes deforestation and mining much less of a pain.
• Exploration could be more autonomous. My scout never strays too far from the beacons I put down (that's not much of an explorer, now is it?).
• I'm still hoping for a more transparent way for me to see how my subjects feel and what they think. Why is that carpenter dancing alone in the pumpkin patch?
• The music mixing works much better than I remembered; notably when my idiotic explorer got killed by fishmen attack, and the tone of the background music got a tad more sinister.
• Building geometry still is the most eldritch thing in the game. Don't put modules in corners, kids, or the fabric of reality will unravel!

 

Yeah I am kinda hoping for a Civilization type of explorer, where you just hit a button and he wanders off.

 

...and then wanders back, covered in barnacles and spouting about his intense desire to have a big clambake of your citizens...

 

Just get a poet - they do basically this, but ALL THE TIME. Though to be fair there is no way to get a poet currently other than through dumb luck. In my numerous runs I have only ever seen one. Hopefully in the future there will be ways to entice upper class citizens to make the journey to our lowly colonies.

 

But why would you want to? It's been clear for awhile that Upper Class citizens are worthless freeloaders who eat your food, require better establishments, put hideous demands in front of you OR ELSE, and are basically just waiting for any elder god to come by to declare their allegiance to.

I think Upper Class are curses that should show up regularly after a set amount of time and demand you freshen up your colony to suit their needs. In other words, they will be an excellent way to cut down on "all cabbage farms, no buildings." The longer they go without their needs (and by golly, they won't dare eat cabbage), the more prestige you lose. Or something.

 

Aristocrats make the best long pork.

 

A few issues so far:

• When you pause the game the animations keep playing
  
• There are so many animals wandering around, and I can't click on them. Had to google the manual to find out how to kill them
  • I didn't mean kill all of them!
• Odd music changes, when I can't see anything out of the ordinary
• Can't select dead fishpeople to use as food
  
• Cannot lower quantity of items being manufactured
  
• Can't cancel jobs
• The job menu entries at the bottom cycle around at unreadable speeds
  
• Explore nodes don't go away
  
• Building dismantle button doesn't work
• Whenever there is a new construction there is a pause in the game
• Citizens would rather eat dead people than forage / harvest
  
• When an event pops up on the right of the screen, I can't tell where that event happened [Fixed Rev 30]

And I can't stop playing it

 

An explorer would make sense given the colonial context.

Spoiler

What sort of abilities would they have though? He\she could have greater vision or mental endurance so they can spend more time in the wilderness? Haven't played the game enough to know how different characters work.

 

I'd like it if an explorer would be smart enough to bring his own food with him or learn to forage. You're not an explorer if you don't bring food with you, you're just getting lost and dying in the wilderness.

 

Also, it would be cool if he could accidentally eat poisonous berries and die a horrible death.

 

Been playing it religiously and I have to say I love where this is going.

Problems
- It is incredibly difficult to keep my citizens safe from the merpeople as my colony expands, even with a large and well equipped military. Even if I disable all jobs the NCO insists on having the footsoldiers help out with the daily labors of the common folk. This results in the following situation

1. Merperson spotted by commoner, immediately flees.
2. Merperson spotted by me, rally point set.
3. Commoner is now being attacked, soldiers scramble to put down their bushels of exotic caviar in order to procure weapons.
4. Commoner is still being attacked.
5. Soldiers pick up weapons.
6. Commoner begins decomposition.

So what I've been doing to avoid tragedy is building small scout houses in the outskirts where my laborers are, so they have a place to run to and lock the door. This brings back wonderful nostalgic memories of scout houses from Age of Empires 1 but I digress. If I'm going to be building anything in the outskirts, I'd like to build actual sentry posts and not low class housing.

- Kitchen workbenches are a waste of resources and do not increase throughput in any way. Being listed as a required module, I have no choice but to place at least one. I understand now that the only foods that are made from the workbench are tinned caviar and beef, but since I can also cook steak using an oven the only real exclusive item that needs a workbench is the caviar. Because workshops cannot seem to multitask, it's always way more efficient to just build rows upon rows of ovens to meet demand.

- Sometimes trees and bushes decide to stop existing. They'll be there and I can click on them, but no option to chop/forage appears. If one of these is next to a choppable tree/forageable bush, the task propagator thingamabob will throw errors, something about comparing lumber with trees. This happens in pretty much all of my replays and the bushes in particular seem to be at least partially responsible for my overseers getting frozen.

- Sometimes I screw up placing a zone and end up creating overlapping grave/farm/stockpiles, and I can't fix it. I seem to be able to place size 0 stockpiles as well, causing massive confusion and despair. (A single pixel at the corner I started from will be highlightable)

- Drag and drop operations feel wonky, especially when the game starts to choke. If I drag a worker too quickly the game may drop the one I have selected onto a different work party and instead take a different one that I passed over.

- Right clicking to rotate a module is oddly unresponsive at times.

Suggestions
- It doesn't feel right to be able to construct buildings with grass, trees, bushes, or big ol' surface nodes popping up out of the floor. Being the principled man I am, I always tell my workers to clear the area first even though it is unnecessary. It hurts my pride.

- If I could specify the kinds of goods I would like placed in a particular stockpile I would be so happy...

- Chivalry is dead. No one holds doors open for anyone and prefers to find other entrances to a building if the one they want to use is currently occupied, rather than wait for the other person to pass. In at least one instance I forgot to build a loading bay for the ceramics workshop (there was a normal door however) and no one could move any clay bricks inside.

- The workshop dialog should really close if I click renovate. It's in the way.

- I realize that energy and powered devices are the Future (TM), but I am very conscious about my environment and would like to have to option to burn clean, efficient, highly concentrated laudanum instead of dirty, polluting, coal. There is clearly nothing wrong with this suggestion and it is something I would promote in real life as well.


Edit:
I just found the Bugs subforum and I will upload my crash files there instead of here.