Upkeep observations

We were talking about mineshafts in order to get infinite ingredients for the three levels of upkeep chests.

Natualism makes mining faster, as does having the upgrades to make mining faster.

 

"Naturalism makes mining faster" Ahh I didn't know that.

 

Argg - for the 4th time running, each of my major workshops broke and had to reset 5 x 4 job queues. Not so bad when you have increments of 10 or 5 but setting a minimum of 100 items by clicking the mouse 100 times is now getting boring

Time for a holiday I feel.

 

The way I personally see upkeep making the most sense is to make it per object and per day of operation. Keep the basic modules at a clockworkian week (5 days) but a day is only registered for a module if it's used at any point.

So build a workbench on day 1 and use it to make planks, 4 days of use left.

Day 2, make more planks. 3 days of use left.

Day 3, got enough planks workbench not used. 3 days of use left.

Day 4, more planks needed, workbench is used. 2 days of use left.

And so forth.

Workshop/office windows already has individual entries for each upkeep viable module, so include 'condition of module' value under each entry for easy tracking by the player. Would also open the door for playing with the idea of varying degrees of upkeep ratios based on module type.

Basic production modules could stick to 5 days of use. But sensitive scientific apparatus might need constant upkeep after each day of use introducing a whole new layer of progression and consequence to some of the more fancier stuff to act as a more natural feeling pacing mechanism.

Edit: Another thought under such a system would be to have stone versions of production module support 5 days of use before upkeep. Whilst higher tier brick or even iron versions would offer 8 and 10 days before upkeep respectively. This would add another incentive to naturally upgrade as you go and eases off the impact of basic module upkeep once your colony is more established so there's a more paced flow to it all and a more natural sense of progression and going through eras/phases.


If it doesn't cause anyone an aneurysm thinking about doing so, a expanded tooltip for the repair chest count that details a overview along the lines of "x modules likely needing basic upkeep shortly, y modules in good condition, z modules likely needing advanced upkeep shortly" like the new population count tooltip for food could also be handy.

Edit: Another idea would be to finally put the building tooltips to good use and have hovering over a building give you summaries of module conditions and orders. So hover over a carpentry and you get:

"Bert ShroomSniffs Creepy Antiquary

Workbench - Planks - Good condition.
Workbench - Cabinets - Ok Condition
Workbench - Workbench - Bad condition"

But utilising iconography for various parts of the tooltip instead of text. Player sees something in the tooltip is in bad condition, opens the building window and BLAM there's the exact days left next to the modules info.

At the moment it's definitely far too gamey especially in that modules only have two absolute states. Working and "Oh no we all spontaneously exploded".

But as it's the first phase of a iterative process hopefully things can only go upwards.... though not fond of the idea of applying upkeep to modules on a entire building level either, still seems a bit too gamey for my liking.

 

The day 5/10/15 cascade of breakages is causing headaches later in the game. Modules are still broken 3 days into the count down leaving 2 days until they break again.

I fundamentally disagree with the set period for such events from a game workflow point of view. The mass extinction causes a disproportionate volume of work that changes the game dynamic for little good. A condition x time x RNG type approach would give a constant flow of breakages but in a more measured manner.

As suggested by a few, the quality of materials and usage should be a factor. Perhaps also an option to call in a repair crew for a workshop would give us the ability to atleast repair important places immediately rather than wait on the chance of a crew getting to the metalworks vs repairing one of my 30 houses that could actually wait.

 

@Bluebird I totally agree with what you are saying...

I'm actually kind of jumping off the upkeep bandwagon right now. That's all you'd be doing is upkeeping or prepping for said upkeep and I want to play, build the colonies...a cult...maybe summon Cthulhu or a boogerman not worry about holy crap the bed's all broke and the workstations! Or what if that happens when said oogey boogies are there...I'm sure Nyralathotep would not be pleased if there were no beds for him to rest in, before destroying the colony. (or after he destroys it...)

 

That's fab news, thanks. Sure I tried the shift trick but will have another go. Again, love the responsiveness of GasLamp, so rare. Upkeep is good idea in principle, look forward to seeing v2

 

Aww .. hope our reaction to 52D was not too bad .... I did feel a bit rotten harping on about upkeep and failing to recognise the other major improvements.