102 hours, all research and underground rooms done: some thoughts

[robbie.price]

Firstly, at 102 hours, I enjoyed my time, enough to be worth the money, and some hopes for the 1.0 version.

In roughly descending order of importance:
1.) Too much walking / too disorganized mage selected tasks, The more I watched them the more it hurt.
2.) Too much Micromanaging. Every rat you want hunted, every tree you want cut, manual, you can paint on and select by groups... but no drag catch all, or more importantly; please ad an auto-mangamement desk for mages to assign and forbid tasks based on inventory.
3.) Logistics support: Chest are a start, but oh boy, do they need more options. Caps per item type: minimum and maximum acceptable stock levels, Timberborn has a totally viable system of priorities (just don't steal the one resource type per crate)
4.) More Tactics in combat, Good move going to real combat rather than autocombat, now more please :- P. better synergy more nature buffs air like things, also elemental strength and weaknesses.
5.) More underground building, most rooms need something on the back wall or roof to qualify . . .thus all that potential lost. Maybe a pre-combat ritual room to apply bonuses before combat that fade if the mage goes above ground.
6.) Stretch each in game hour to 2 minutes rather than 1, less important if you get the task management to not eat the whole day walking, but even so crossing rooms even passing though a door takes too much of a day.
7.) More interesting wands, the strict wand progression is a downgrade from the previous system.
8.) Trade and outreach beyond the fog. The students come from somewhere . . . where somewhere else exists, there is opportunity for reputation and trade. Quest boards to send students on, sinks for resources you have too much of.

[Shootme]

9.) Wearable items so you can make your mages stronger by crafting
10.) If i have a 200 gardens and a mage can't do them all in one day, don't let them start back at 1, but continue where they left (if they are the same priority)
11.) If a mage completed a task near the fog, chopping, mining or harvasting and is going back, please pick the item you just gained up and haul it home!
12.) Give some bonus to staff. A student gains no extra stats from graduating
13.) Add "forbid" to the policy's

Thank you. I love this game.

[robbie.price]

Ya. having any equipment beyond just 'the wand' would be nice. and carrying stuff home when giving up on a task, that would be somewhat harder to implement but ya that would be awesome.

[n3mes1s]

One tip. To hunt rats or do tasks with many items, you just need to double click in one. All the same items in the screen area will select as well. If you want to hunt a group of rats in an area, zoom in and double click. Now you just need to click once more in "hunt". Voilá.

One thing that annoyes me is when they are mining or whatever, they grab the dropped resource and in the way home to haul it, they drop it because they need to do something else, even if that something else is located in your home as well. Come on... just haul the resource on your way back!!!

But i dont know what game you playing, but my gardening plots dont "reset" as you say. If a mage is not done harvesting, he will finish the next day or another mage will pick it up. Honestly i think that most of your points are just complains rather than sugesstions because many of em are wrong lol.

[Cthonyxa]

Originally posted by robbie.price:

1.) Too much walking / too disorganized mage selected tasks, The more I watched them the more it hurt.

I run into this problem every time I start expanding to have the high level classrooms. Granted, some of my particular problem is chest management (lack of logistics support makes it hard to properly manage where resources go), but the task optimization definitely could use a bit of work. Especially since late game schools need to be fairly large, which exacerbates the problem.

I feel like this one is related:

Originally posted by Shootme:

10.) If i have a 200 gardens and a mage can't do them all in one day, don't let them start back at 1, but continue where they left (if they are the same priority)

I didn't realize that would happen, but it explains a lot about my mid-to-late game farm failures. A persistent farming queue that all harvesters follow would definitely be a good idea. Adding harvesting quilteds would be really nice, too.

Originally posted by robbie.price:

2.) Too much Micromanaging. Every rat you want hunted, every tree you want cut, manual, you can paint on and select by groups... but no drag catch all, or more importantly; please ad an auto-mangamement desk for mages to assign and forbid tasks based on inventory.

The drag catch all needs to be a thing. I was honestly surprised that's not something that was added before EA.

I haven't had issues with trees because the lumberjacks cut the garden plot ones, but there is no automated corpse farms right now (nor hunting quilteds) so, hunting is my #1 enemy. I really just want a quilted to take care of my croa and dire rat murder tasks without any input from me.

But also: +10000 to an auto-management desk where we can set min/max harvesting amounts! (Any resources below min would be treated as higher priority as items within the min/max range, leading quilteds and mages to deal with them first.) That alone would make the game go so much smoother.

Originally posted by robbie.price:

3.) Logistics support: Chest are a start, but oh boy, do they need more options. Caps per item type: minimum and maximum acceptable stock levels, Timberborn has a totally viable system of priorities (just don't steal the one resource type per crate)

YES! Please!! I am very into having storage with the requisite crafting items in the same room as the crafting stations, but without a mix/max limiter it's impossible because resources don't get distributed evenly.

I'd also like to see more wall chest options (with the ability for the quilteds to access them). Some stuff could be repurposed from decorative items (leaving the luxury intact, of course): bookshelves could hold scrolls, tincture shelves and medical carts could hold potions and potion ingredients, and spice shelves could hold plant parts.

Originally posted by robbie.price:

5.) More underground building, most rooms need something on the back wall or roof to qualify . . .thus all that potential lost. Maybe a pre-combat ritual room to apply bonuses before combat that fade if the mage goes above ground.

I was under the impression that you couldn't even make proper rooms in the Underschool. Which rooms have you successfully made? Also: yeah, having a few Underschool-specific room types would be pretty cool.

Originally posted by robbie.price:

6.) Stretch each in game hour to 2 minutes rather than 1, less important if you get the task management to not eat the whole day walking, but even so crossing rooms even passing though a door takes too much of a day.

I'm not super sure the day has to be longer; I'd rather see world traversal efficiency improvements.

1) All mage movement should be slightly increased at a base level. Even in small schools I need to assign 2 eating periods to ensure they have enough time to get their food, get to a dining table, and eat. That says to me that they walk too slowly.

2) Speed should give movement bonus. More speed = faster walking and faster casting. This will help the mages keep up with the expanding school/world.

3) There should be craftable portals unlockable by mid-game research. These portals would allow a mage to teleport to any other portal on the map (portals would be placeable on ground, floors, and in the Underschool). Having their crafting be a ritual and having the recipe increase proportionally to number of portals on the map (including in shrinks) would balance out their OPness, imo. I would also couple this with rooms in the Underschool (on the spine) that have naturally occurring portals.

Originally posted by robbie.price:

7.) More interesting wands, the strict wand progression is a downgrade from the previous system.

I feel like the previous system was a bit too min/maxy to be fun, but I do think that wands need more variation. I would go for modifiers, though.

Like, a Tier 1 Fire Wand of Strength could have an extra Earth level that confers Earth Armor I. The modifiers would be randomized, with the wand-maker's abilities increasing the chance of getting a modifier (and also increasing the level of said modifier). Late game, there could be an imbuing station that gives mages the ability to add/change modifiers on wands.

Originally posted by Shootme:

12.) Give some bonus to staff. A student gains no extra stats from graduating

That would be nice. Nothing fancy, just something to show that the baby is All Growed Up now.

And my QoL suggestions:

• Add "Wand Type" to the Group Policies.
  
• Add quilteds that can harvest high level resources (eg. Runewood), but take Dark and the req skill (eg. Nature) to craft. This would take two mages working on the station in most cases. Alternatively, the mages could buff the quilteds periodically, giving them the ability to harvest the high level stuff.
  
• Shelves that can accept anything placed on flooring, but can be built in 1x1 increments instead of 1x5(? whatever the maximum depth is). They attach to walls.
  
• Two new room types: a hothouse--small window req--and greenhouse--large/huge window req--that give buffs to the plants
  
• Allow the quilteds to grab things taller than them (I like raised chests/planters but they're inaccessible to the quilteds without ladder shenanigans). 3 to 4 tiles above would be perfect, I think.
  
• Remove the scriveners desk requirement from the first tier of the research room, but add a bookshelf requirement to balance it out. By the time the desk is unlocked, meeting the higher tier room reqs is trivial and so it feels like a wasted room type.
  
• Let us customize the name/appearance of our Founder! It makes me sad that it's random
  
• Beating a boss for the first time should give the Founder an increase in the same elemental type. So, the Burrower Larva would increase the Founder's fire magic by 1 (or maybe 2, so they could make Honeyed Gruel), and future bosses of other elemental types would do the same. The idea would be to keep the Founder relevant as the game progresses, allowing them to be a weak, but still useful, all-rounder support staffer. It also is a way to help make the bosses feel "special".
  
• Let us retire staff into ghosts! Dying in this game is actually pretty tough to do, and it's tedious (and sad) to summon a student just to kill them off. Adding a ritual to let the staff member become a ghost (who you can then assign to graves the same way as you would a dead body) is a lot more efficient and humane.
  
• ETA: Full-depth stairs (ie. floor that is a stair), to better make raised platforms in rooms.

[Philtre]

Originally posted by Cthonyxa:

Originally posted by robbie.price:

2.) Too much Micromanaging. Every rat you want hunted, every tree you want cut, manual, you can paint on and select by groups... but no drag catch all, or more importantly; please ad an auto-mangamement desk for mages to assign and forbid tasks based on inventory.

The drag catch all needs to be a thing. I was honestly surprised that's not something that was added before EA.

I suspect a box-select option was deliberately left out, to try to prevent players from mass-harvesting everything in sight and overburdening their mages with pointless harvesting tasks before they have the ability to properly transport and store that amount of stuff.* The "double-click to select all on screen" method is adequate for targeting specific types of items; box-select would be useful mainly for selecting everything regardless of type, which frankly is not something you want to be doing as a routine thing. By the time you have enough Quilted haulers to keep up with that kind of thing, you can grow everything in planter boxes anyway.

(*Not that it's working - I've been watching a lot of Let's Play's, and pretty much everyone starts by harvesting every resource on the map and then having 90% of it destroyed by rain, since they have no idea how long it will take to haul and store hundreds of items.)

[Cthonyxa]

Originally posted by Philtre:

I suspect a box-select option was deliberately left out, to try to prevent players from mass-harvesting everything in sight and overburdening their mages with pointless harvesting tasks before they have the ability to properly transport and store that amount of stuff.*

Probably, but--as you point out--that's something that people are going to learn through trial and error, regardless of whether or not there's a tasty drag option.

Originally posted by Philtre:

The "double-click to select all on screen" method is adequate for targeting specific types of items; box-select would be useful mainly for selecting everything regardless of type, which frankly is not something you want to be doing as a routine thing. By the time you have enough Quilted haulers to keep up with that kind of thing, you can grow everything in planter boxes anyway.

I want it for when I need to clear out an entire area for laying foundations or expanding my outdoor farming plots/graveyard. It might be a mostly niche usage, but clearing things out right now is an absolute chore, even with the double-click.

[robbie.price]

Originally posted by Cthonyxa:

I'd also like to see more wall chest options (with the ability for the quilteds to access them). Some stuff could be repurposed from decorative items (leaving the luxury intact, of course): bookshelves could hold scrolls, tincture shelves and medical carts could hold potions and potion ingredients, and spice shelves could hold plant parts.

That would be nice, After implementing logistics priorities. Oh and add magical chest to chest tunneling spells. where you cast the spell on one container and everything in it over the max is moved to containers that are under their minimums. Max number of items moved per cast = air magic.

Originally posted by Cthonyxa:

I was under the impression that you couldn't even make proper rooms in the Underschool. Which rooms have you successfully made? Also: yeah, having a few Underschool-specific room types would be pretty cool.

The scullery. It only needs grounded. So I put it below ground, and use it to mass produce slop.

Originally posted by Cthonyxa:

Originally posted by robbie.price:

6.) Stretch each in game hour to 2 minutes rather than 1, less important if you get the task management to not eat the whole day walking, but even so crossing rooms even passing though a door takes too much of a day.

I'm not super sure the day has to be longer; I'd rather see world traversal efficiency improvements.

1) All mage movement should be slightly increased at a base level. Even in small schools I need to assign 2 eating periods to ensure they have enough time to get their food, get to a dining table, and eat. That says to me that they walk too slowly.

That's either they walk too much, or too slowly, making each in game hour 2 minutes, would make walking proportionally faster. (keeping the animation the same), and casting faster. but it would make rituals longer and sleeping longer. That said staggering your mages days so your plant specialists (4+ nature) are all working nights already gives the player something to do at night anyway so it's not quite as painful.

Originally posted by Cthonyxa:

3) There should be craftable portals unlockable by mid-game research. These portals would allow a mage to teleport to any other portal on the map (portals would be placeable on ground, floors, and in the Underschool). Having their crafting be a ritual and having the recipe increase proportionally to number of portals on the map (including in shrinks) would balance out their OPness, imo. I would also couple this with rooms in the Underschool (on the spine) that have naturally occurring portals.

if the EA has 3 of 5 wands, and 5 ish Spine descents. that suggests 8 or so levels to the final underschool . . . that's a lot of walking.

Originally posted by Cthonyxa:

Originally posted by robbie.price:

7.) More interesting wands, the strict wand progression is a downgrade from the previous system.

I feel like the previous system was a bit too min/maxy to be fun, but I do think that wands need more variation. I would go for modifiers, though.

Like, a Tier 1 Fire Wand of Strength could have an extra Earth level that confers Earth Armor I. The modifiers would be randomized, with the wand-maker's abilities increasing the chance of getting a modifier (and also increasing the level of said modifier). Late game, there could be an imbuing station that gives mages the ability to add/change modifiers on wands.

I would go for a point-buy system, but a dynamic one. For every wand held by a student or in storage with an ability the ability costs 2-3 more to make a new wand that also has that ability, and -1 for each ability the staff making the wand has.

That way there is no 'best' wand from a point buy perspective, the 'best' depends dynamically on what wants you already have made, and what staff you have making the wand. Making the wands should be a focus point of the game, not a workbench you set to 'make until you have 1' and forget about.

Originally posted by Cthonyxa:

Add quilteds that can harvest high level resources (eg. Runewood), but take Dark and the req skill (eg. Nature) to craft. This would take two mages working on the station in most cases. Alternatively, the mages could buff the quilteds periodically, giving them the ability to harvest the high level stuff.

That's a lot of code to add, I like the idea of non-ritual jobs that take two to make work, but it adds a LOT of waiting for somebody else to also walk to the place and not change jobs half way. . . Talk about a nightmare for the current tasks system. Perhaps a 'two step' process, make some intermediate bit that is then used to make the final quilted that can do the full job

Originally posted by Cthonyxa:

[Two new room types: a hothouse--small window req--and greenhouse--large/huge window req--that give buffs to the plants

There is already one that buffs tree growth, Grounded, wand maker 2 trees, and a lot of windows. Also just any room with lots and lots of windows will have faster growing rates than the same floor space on the ground even for non-trees.

Originally posted by Cthonyxa:

Beating a boss for the first time should give the Founder an increase in the same elemental type. So, the Burrower Larva would increase the Founder's fire magic by 1 (or maybe 2, so they could make Honeyed Gruel), and future bosses of other elemental types would do the same. The idea would be to keep the Founder relevant as the game progresses, allowing them to be a weak, but still useful, all-rounder support staffer. It also is a way to help make the bosses feel "special".

That's a really good idea. Because ... ya ... the founder rapildly fades away into 5 quilted's wearing a trenchcoat ... kindof a waste.

Originally posted by Cthonyxa:

Let us retire staff into ghosts! Dying in this game is actually pretty tough to do, and it's tedious (and sad) to summon a student just to kill them off. Adding a ritual to let the staff member become a ghost (who you can then assign to graves the same way as you would a dead body) is a lot more efficient and humane.

Not sold on that being 'humane' sure knowingly marching them off into an unwinnable fight is horrific, but so is un-requested euthanasia on otherwise healthy people. . . If they bring back the age mechanic. . . that will keep away the 'requirement' to farm hallowlillies by player directed deaths.

[robbie.price]

Originally posted by Philtre:

Originally posted by Cthonyxa:

The drag catch all needs to be a thing. I was honestly surprised that's not something that was added before EA.

I suspect a box-select option was deliberately left out, to try to prevent players from mass-harvesting everything in sight and overburdening their mages with pointless harvesting tasks before they have the ability to properly transport and store that amount of stuff.* The "double-click to select all on screen" method is adequate for targeting specific types of items; box-select would be useful mainly for selecting everything regardless of type, which frankly is not something you want to be doing as a routine thing. By the time you have enough Quilted haulers to keep up with that kind of thing, you can grow everything in planter boxes anyway.

(*Not that it's working - I've been watching a lot of Let's Play's, and pretty much everyone starts by harvesting every resource on the map and then having 90% of it destroyed by rain, since they have no idea how long it will take to haul and store hundreds of items.)

I use the double click method, which is sometimes dodgy if you are clicking are overlapped with another thing. . . but still it's painful. having to zoom in find a rat in the open, then zoom out enough to catch all the rats, without loosing the location of the safe to double click rat. and do that every game day.


Easy solution is lock the 'box select' under a research or school population threshold, followed by an auto-task management research in the next tier of researches.

[n3mes1s]

Double clicking painful? omg. Some of you really did start playing videogames yesterday? lmao. Most games if not all always fail in something like this, a game cant be perfect. The double clicking method is perfectly fine, in fact i wish other games had it. Please stop complaining about idiocities.

[robbie.price]

could do, but I prefer holding out hope that simple to fix things can be fixed, the game is good enough it deserves to be better.