Resource management costs seem to be too punishing right now

[Griffin]

First I want to say I am greatly enjoying the art, ambiance, and story and would very much like to complete this game. However I have found that I am running into a wall that is being unable to prevent game overs caused by starvation, running out of fuel or decorum. (The furthest I have made it is week 15.) Currently my only option on a game over seems to be to start over from a far earlier point, spending a lot of time redoing all of the choices and plot developments I have already encountered, with the hope that maybe this time I can save up more food.

My suggestion would be that the game could use a few adjustments to make it more approachable for more players:

-Consider re-balancing how much food/fuel is required per day, or how much food/fuel hunting provides. For example, at this point in the story it's summer and the characters are discussing that we need to "stockpile" food, but 1 hunting trip doesn't even provide enough food for 1 day of normal fuel/rations - how are we supposed to stockpile anything?
- Adding on to that, perhaps there could be multiple difficulty levels with varying resource requirements, so players can be hardcore survivalist if they want or focus more on the story choices instead.
- Allow for manual save slots mid-day. This will allow players to make different choices about the day's resource management without also having to spend a lot of time redoing all of the story choices.

In general the issue for me is the combination of the character opinion management AND the survival management. Failing isn't just a matter of picking the wrong dialogue choice and getting a bad ending - it's not saving enough food 2 weeks ago, so now I starve and have to replay through several hours of progress. It's become frustrating and not fun. I really want to see what happens later in the expedition, so I hope that these suggestions may help for any planned changes in the future. In the meantime I will probably be waiting and hoping someone writes a detailed guide.

[RobOda]

Yes, I do think we should be able to load at any point in the save, but this might be a technical issue from the information they need to track perhaps?

Re: Resources; You can under-feed and under-heat the expeditions. Freezing/Malnourishment isn't a big deal as long as you manage it within the sickbay;

Put those people in order of priority (Starving/Frostbitten - Freezing/malnourished) in the medbay and they heal at the end of the week.

You can also cure two free freezes via Engineer's raising the heat on the furnace.

The medbay can go up to four if you rescue med supplies and then put Runt as the Dr. So that gives you 4 freeze/food heals per week.

[Griffin]

Thanks for the tip with the medbay, I will try that and see if it helps me keep up better. However with using low food, decorum still is a big problem although I could disable the decorum game over option.

[gcadays2009]

Originally posted by Griffin:

Thanks for the tip with the medbay, I will try that and see if it helps me keep up better. However with using low food, decorum still is a big problem although I could disable the decorum game over option.

Decorum shouldn't be a problem. Several choices will come along that raises. Also take advantage of feeding outside starving range removes 1 malnourish. So having 1 malnourished is ok.

[Andersen]

Finished game in one play, is not hard

[Penfold]

Originally posted by Andersen:

Finished game in one play, is not hard

Cool story bro.

[One-Winged Harpy]

Strongly agree that more agile approach to saves is needed. The main issue is that when you reload, you have to read dozens of already read dialogs again. I also got to inevitable gameover on week 15, the nearest point I can reload is week 9, and the thought that I have to replay so many days (and listen to Grimleys songs again) dreads me :(

[RobOda]

Originally posted by No way, Nikki:

Strongly agree that more agile approach to saves is needed. The main issue is that when you reload, you have to read dozens of already read dialogs again. I also got to inevitable gameover on week 15, the nearest point I can reload is week 9, and the thought that I have to replay so many days (and listen to Grimleys songs again) dreads me :(

Apparently, what you have to do is go on the load page and delete week 15, that will unlock week 14 again.

Anyway, I don't think it is very difficult.

I beat it with everyone alive on the first attempt ~ I still had coal for heating through the winter phases (-42c, where 50 heat = isn't enough). So it absolutely is doable and the issue is player related to mismanagement of resources.

[Federok]

actually i think its tunned just fine. Somehow decorum never became a problem for me so it always was a thing to get a manegeable number people frozen of malnourish.


Even after wasting men in a dumb goose chase i manage to go through winter with enought resources for a least two more weeks.
Thanks to the fishing event, hunting the penguins that stop by the camp and hunting a couple of sea leopards the food wasnt an issue. What worried me was the cold but since i saved couple of Elephant seals (wich are both good fuel and they cure freeze) i was able to use them along my last bucked of coal to survive until i found more Elephants seals

Found that having the 3 slots for the medical bay and guns for hunting were both essential for me.

If the fuel and food consumption was any lower it would've been a cake walk honestly.

Also there is a trick/cheat that i think could help anyone strugling.

At the start of a week you could send three scouts to explore, then reload and send them to explore other parts. That way you could find were the best hunts are.

that said i do agree that save system can be a pain sometimes.
i found my self redoing an entire week because of slip made put someone were shouldnt be.

edit: it reminds a little to papers please in wich the way to go is to start cutting cost right from the start (and manage the negatives) than to wait until resources become scarce.

[PIN1]

I personally like the lack of forgiveness in saves. Makes it feel more permanent which matches the game and atmosphere.

[Theodis]

In these types of games the resource pressure usually starts out very minimal and then ramps up to requiring more than you can produce to put pressure on you to make difficult choices. The trick is usually to just right off the bat stockpile as many resources early on while it's easy so you have a surplus later when it's not.

So in this game for instance there is no penalty other than decorum the first few weeks when underfeeding or underheating the crew. So you can take the hit and save resources early on. You don't want to be at max decorum and it's probably a good idea to stay around the middle level as any options that boosts decorum will be a waste if you're already at max or the boost would put you over max.

When the game picks up and actually penalizes you with malnourished and freezing crewmembers for underfeeding and underheating, it's good to save resources by having people freeze and go malnourished if during the next week you're going to meet their needs because meeting their needs will cure one malnourished person and one freezing person. If you have no one to cure then you've essentially wasted some resources you could have saved.

That said. This is a game about the narrative experience. If you min max too hard you kind of spoil that experience for yourself, as it's meant to be a rough experience where you need to make the hard choices occasionally losing people in the process. If you're min maxing on your first playthrough trying to get the best outcome you're kinda diminishing the experience of the story. Ideally for your first time through you should be rolling with the punches and dealing with the losses as they come for the best experience.

[Federok]

Originally posted by Theodis:

Ideally for your first time through you should be rolling with the punches and dealing with the losses as they come for the best experience.

i think that after sinking with the ship in my first playthough, it earned my try harding it XD

[Griffin]

Originally posted by Theodis:

That said. This is a game about the narrative experience. If you min max too hard you kind of spoil that experience for yourself, as it's meant to be a rough experience where you need to make the hard choices occasionally losing people in the process. If you're min maxing on your first playthrough trying to get the best outcome you're kinda diminishing the experience of the story. Ideally for your first time through you should be rolling with the punches and dealing with the losses as they come for the best experience.

Yeah, this was definitely what I wanted to do while playing - I went in wanting to play like a branching-paths visual novel, but it doesn't really seem to work like that - there aren't really the same kind of 'paths' because you can't progress without resources. My problem is that by not min-maxing I got myself stuck too hard in a way that was frustrating, not fun. And since you keep all the same resource choices if you load an earlier save, the only way to truly fix that is to restart from the very beginning and try to remember the bad options (and there is currently no way to skip dialogue,etc)

I'm not going to claim I have the best ideas for fixing this, but my opinion as a casual player is that the current system doesn't really allow you to do a "live with the consequences" play. I was able to finish the game by turning off decorum game over, but it really wasn't as satisfying to play that way.

Overall though, I am glad I picked the game up because the art + atmosphere is fantastic.

[One-Winged Harpy]

I already got myself twice in deathloop when no matter what you do, you fail, and the only way out is reloading to much earlier save, like 5-6 weeks earlier or more.
The main problem however is not the difficulty (I have one of the hardest achievements in Frostpunk, for example - not lose a single person on Hard difficulty, so I know and like the challenge). The main problem is that reloading means you need to click through tons of already read dialogs. And you cannot skip them cause than you will lose precious loyalty points. It quickly becomes exhausting. I honestly don't know a good way to resolve it. Better save system might help, but deathloops are still a thing, that means clicking through dialogs won't go away.