Some Suggestions for village management

[naii.neocities.org]

I've played this game for a few hours now, haven't gotten too far into it. I've been spending more time managing my village than anything. I'm a longtime rimworld player, so I understand a thing or two about it. Haven't played a lot of Terraria though, but I'm enjoying that side of the game too.

As it stands, village management is kinda... simplistic. I get it though, game is in development. I have a few ideas for the kind of things that can help get things going better though. I don't know the whole design philosophy around this game btw, it's a mix between two very different games. I know that, so for all I know certain mechanics might be omitted or simplistic on purpose.

(note that since I'm not far into this game and the tutorials are almost nonexistent, I might describe something that already exists... sorry...)

Material Overview
In Rimworld you can view everything within your stockpiles at any time via a cascading drop down menu at the top left. This is essential for planning out things in the game. Whether it be food production or Construction, knowing what you have at any time lets the player gauge what kind of decisions they can make.

I have several chests full of different items and having to look through them all to get a temporary grasp on what items I have is difficult for projects with any complexity. Being able to know what I have would simplify that a lot.

Temperature Simulation
Food is too easy to get and store. There is almost no challenge in starting a farm and storing hundreds of units of food. Likewise, there is very little danger in travelling aside from the mobs you may encounter in an area. When there's very little mechanical difference between a snow biome and a desert, that leads to slightly stale gameplay. People should have to live in different conditions in different areas, and adapt to those conditions.

If things reacted to temperature, however, things would be a bit more complex. Food might be harder to come by in extreme weather, and could spoil if left in the heat. People might get too hot, or too cold, and end up dying as a result.

This would give more meaningful choice to where you lived and how you traveled. Living in that Snow Biome, for example, would make it more difficult for food to spoil but kill farm crops. And the Desert would be a cruel and inhospitable place. Like it is in reality. It'd also have a knock on effects on other parts of the game. So running next to that puddle of lava might be a bit more dangerous.

More complex mood
It's really easy to make people happy right now. Just give them a big room with a lot of stuff in it and they'll never be sad again. I think it should be harder than that. Villagers should react to the things around them. Feel bad when a fellow villager dies. Wince in pain. Develop relationships and act accordingly. They're less like people right now and more like robots that tend to your farms.

Planning
Having to plan things in your head sucks. What comes out will always be a bit different than what you envisioned, and having to rebuild things is the worst, so being able to reiterate things in the game world safely would be a huge boon to constructing intelligent bases. Even the ability to just place dummy white boxes would be better than nothing, really.

Omnipresent information box
Funny name, I know. In Rimworld, literally any object you click in the world will have an "i" button on the top right that'll display all information about it. This is an invaluable tool to understand what certain objects do under the hood and what kinds of stats you'll need to worry about. I can click on a wood wall and slate wall to see how their health differs, or a wood door and marble door to see how their opening speeds compare. This is great to tell the player mechanics they might miss. Right now in this game I don't understand the difference between a wall and a fence.

I have a lot more ideas but my fingers are tired so owie owwww

[Sleazy Ninja]

Your tips are great, for a colony sim game like Rimworld. Much too complex for this type of game IMO.

In Necesse a playthrough would be Terraria-style: kill all the bosses while upgrading your gear and items in their respective stages.

Your settlements really have only 2 uses: gather some crafting ingredients that you don't want to be bothered with and provide a safe spot to craft your gear + potion/food.

So all the villagers need is a work order and a drop-off point, like it is now. With that set up in a convenient way, a settlement becomes somewhat of a "quality of life" thing because you won't have to gather certain items over and over again before crafting.

Here is what my loop per boss is:

- Explore new dungeon/area for new resources
- Check what the new resources are used for and what I am missing
- Fix supply chain for missing resources in settlement
- Go catch some fish in other biomes because I'm NOT going to create a settlement just for a single angler who will get raided to death anyway.
- Craft new gear/potions/food
- Kill boss several times
- Check what post-boss goodies there are to craft
- get new quest

Everything else is just beautification for no apparent reason. I can build a wall around the settlement with a single entry point to fix raids, or just deal with them myself in under 5 min.

You are right, they are nothing more than drones (except for the Explorer I guess). But I wouldn't expect anything complex like Rimworld. In Terraria it's also pretty limited to "I wanne be within 30 blocks of the Dryad and in a forest biome" or similar.

I'm sure there are plans for more intricate biomes and settlement things, but the game IS an action packed boss fighting exploration game first and a "quality of life" settlement builder second as it stands.

More decoration elements would maybe motivate me a bit more to build a nice settlement and not a labor camp.

I'm personally a fan of this type of progression, and I look forward to any new content that is to come. I'm convinced it will be fun!

[naii.neocities.org]

Originally posted by Sleazy Ninja:

snip

I am wondering if the terraria progression is the end-all of the game, since on the store page "more advanced settlements" are among the future things planned for the game and there's a lot of seemingly placeholder mechanics that could be expanded upon (meal & area restrictions, room requirements, etc. In Rimworld I can torture prisoners with these things! No such luck here...). I see no reason why this game couldn't one day evolve into something that is more complicated than Terraria when half of its core concept is a game that functioned as a simplified version of Dwarf Fortress.

There's a lot of potential to get things like production chains and caravans going. So you could automate that scenario you talked about of fishing in different biomes without having to make a dummy settlement. Or have different settlements share resources (think Fallout 4's Supply Lines)

Really, the possibilities are endless. And best of all, anyone could play the way they wanted. Limiting things to one progression loop where half of the game is overly simple would be... tame.

[Sleazy Ninja]

Originally posted by naii_:

Originally posted by Sleazy Ninja:

snip

I am wondering if the terraria progression is the end-all of the game, since on the store page "more advanced settlements" are among the future things planned for the game and there's a lot of seemingly placeholder mechanics that could be expanded upon (meal & area restrictions, room requirements, etc. In Rimworld I can torture prisoners with these things! No such luck here...). I see no reason why this game couldn't one day evolve into something that is more complicated than Terraria when half of its core concept is a game that functioned as a simplified version of Dwarf Fortress.

There's a lot of potential to get things like production chains and caravans going. So you could automate that scenario you talked about of fishing in different biomes without having to make a dummy settlement. Or have different settlements share resources (think Fallout 4's Supply Lines)

Really, the possibilities are endless. And best of all, anyone could play the way they wanted. Limiting things to one progression loop where half of the game is overly simple would be... tame.

Let's hope so!

For truly endless possibilities we need a strong modding community though. Think Sim Settlements for Fallout 4, to continue your example. Or the Frackin' Universe mod for Starbound. Just a few examples of mods that basically changed the entire game.

I would love to see this game take all the directions possible: more bosses, moaar items, moaarrrr settlementz, mooaaarrrr EVERYTHING (but probably lower FPS cause of the mods).

[lincolntoms]

1 i dont think you need a material overview as ling as your crafting is near enough to storage it auto uses the things in it you can also select priority for item type for chests for when the villagers sort its not perfect but it helps but it could be better for skme reason villagers keep taking ke and my friends scrolls and keeping them
2 no i dont want food to spoil too fast that would too negativity impact the exploration fighting aspects of the game but yes having biome effects like increased health drain in the desert, reduced move speed in snow to go with the slippery ice in snow biome and something else for the swamp biome and havjng to use a trinket or utility trinket to over come it would be fun make you think more about what gear u have
3 yeah mood is too easy atm big room with stuff and minimum food easy happiness i think there needs to be a negative for small rooms no stuff the food bonuses are good where they are this would all balance out as you grow because you get bonus happiness with small numbers of villagers
4 ive never had a problem but i can see the use of it
5 walls all have the same hp higher lvl stuff just requires a certain lvl of tool to break it and i dont understand the difference between wall and fence just if you use a fence it wont count as a house and villagers wont like it

[ElDudorino]

Planning / blueprint mode could be nice and a view to see everything in storage would be kinda nice QoL. But other than that I'd rather see the settlement development take a different path. Rimworld already exists; I don't think we need this game to be Action Rimworld.

I would prefer that settlements stay rather simple as they are now but with more 'jobs.' Like raising monsters who can become summons for you, working on your blueprints / gathering materials for them / building copies of them, or managing your tavern. Also taverns would need to exist for that last one.

[Hellorin]

settlements is also where you hoard all the loot you pick up.
its also where you got your personal squad of pawns-ready-to-fight-to-the-death
i just spent a weekend designing a lava surrounded city spanning one full sized map (with a farming quarter, animal keeping quarter, professional craftsman quarter and my squad ready room + warehouses, rivers (for ducks) gardens and defensive grid, even a few fallback positions - with extra walls and autoturrets at x5 the tick speed (see my other post) in case the later game raids become harder and whatnot) and its still not done.

i havent encountered any hard time with knowing where's my inventory at because of the auto-use from nearby storage.

If you really want to nitpick, name your storage boxes, you can see it on hover

[APoCaLyPSE666NoW]

Originally posted by Sleazy Ninja:

- Go catch some fish in other biomes because I'm NOT going to create a settlement just for a single angler who will get raided to death anyway.

Official Wiki :
Raids will take place occasionally after dusk. They will not occur if the settlement has less than 3 settlers.

Little settlements with 2 settlers are very good even managed by 1 settler (because Elder come first and can't do nothing).

Settlements with only 2 settlers won't be raided.

For example just 1 angler + elder settlement you can get all fishes.

My angler do farming wheat/crafting his food/woodcutting/hauling/fishing
I don't need to assist him.

With teleporter later, you can come fast take stored fishes.

Multiple little settlements help to have wanted settler for you main settlement because you can recruit settler and send him/her in another settlement.

You can create as many 2 settlers only settlements you want without being raided.