Should they stay or should they go.... Immigration/Emigration and breaking limits

Discussion in 'Clockwork Empires General' started by Tikigod, Jul 12, 2016.

  1. Tikigod

    Tikigod Member

    Less a suggestion here and more pondering how viable something like this might be in terms of work involved to implement....

    The current immigration system of 1 building == one colonist seems a bit.... well lacking. The idea of controlled immigration being driven by means to house them makes sense but the idea that one building attracts one person is the problematic part.

    So first stage of the general outline is (relatively) straight forward where you have housing track how many beds are present inside acting as a immediate +1 population count with a 'comfort' limit based on grid floor space of say:

    10% of grid floor space == Number of comfortable sleeping units.

    A 5x2 dwelling would comfortably accommodate for 1 bed.

    Equally a 5x5 dwelling would comfortably accommodate 2 beds.

    Colonists sleeping in a 5x2 dwelling with more than one bed or a 5x5 with more than 2 beds generate negative reactions due to cramped conditions after sleeping there.

    Next part is somewhat less straight forward.....

    If at any point the number of beds decreases meaning you now have a population higher than your means to support basic accommodations for then this opens the doors for emigration, where a colonist disgruntled enough will pack up and actually leave the colony.

    Rather than a "Last in, first out" emigration system, instead track a variable which is the sum of a colonists total degree of wanting to stay.

    Something like:

    Emotion state
    Positive Emotional state = +1.
    Negative Emotional state = -1.

    Food Quality
    Positive Food Quality +1.
    Negative Food Quality -1.

    Bedding Quality
    Positive Sleeping Quality +1.
    Negative Sleeping Quality -1.

    Traits
    <Insert various influential +1 or -1s here for traits which would logically tie to this>


    Then for emigration the colonists with the lowest value (or one randomly picked if many have the same value) decides enough is enough and leaves. Now given the factors used to decide this, higher class colonists are actually much more of a flight risk if you for whatever reason you end up exceeding your colony accommodation capacity due to how much more fussy there are about what they consider the minimum acceptable quality for pretty much everything.

    A worker pretty much needs to be eating their own arm for sustenance and sleeping in a dung heap to decide that's poor standards. Where as a overseer will whinge if they're made to sleep in a basic cot in a semi-decent quality home after having warm cabbage stew for dinner.

    So there's a sense of risk/reward and challenge to it all, and makes the entire thing feel less 'gamey' to the behaviours.

    And that would be immigration and emigration.



    Now for the stuff that is potentially full blown grade-A "Fuck that, that's a crap ton of code rework requirement".... Breaking limits.

    Currently a workcrew is restricted to a directly assignable workforce of 4 workers. Frankly with the game as it stands now this is nowhere near sufficient for certain workshops for what should be viable approaches for players to pursue and tackle the challenges that come with it.

    However simply raising the limit (or doing away with it entirely) is likely to be equally problematic as it then throws a whole wealth of other things out of whack and would probably cause those involved in balancing to break down, weep and barricade themselves in a dark room until everyone promises to not touch the limits.

    So a very basic not fully fleshed out alternative could be to resurrect a old long forgotten concept that the game ended up never receiving.... own-able housing.

    Housing that can be assigned to a workcrew as a secondary assignment to their primary workshop/office assignment, once assigned no one else will sleep in beds present in that house, and colonists in a crew with assigned housing will sleep in there over any other options unless some unexpected force makes that impossible.

    The number of beds present then acts as a controlling factor of how many workers the workcrew can have assigned to it. For the first 5 beds, nothing changes... that just covers the overseer, and 4 workers. But any further beds then increase the assignable worker limit of that workcrew by 1 up to a value of say 7 works total (ACK! Workcrew UI rewrites!)

    (Side note:These workcrew beds also offer the other benefits for immigration as covered above which is a mixed blessing when you think about how you're adding beds that might attract new colonists but those new beds usable by the assigned crew... so you'd have to plan accordingly)

    If at anytime the workcrew is unassigned from their housing, then the workcrew limit reverts back to the default 4 workers and any additional that were assigned are forcibly unassigned and returned to the general worker pool to be assigned elsewhere.

    This behaviour would also apply to barracks, allowing larger barracks to allow a NCO to support a large military unit within reason, and also locks out other colonists from stealing soliders beds... knock on result of this, if you want NCOs with barracks assigned you then have to actually build housing to allow your other colonists to sleep, which means you will actually have to deal with immigration.... no more hack around barrack solutions.
     
    Last edited: Jul 12, 2016