Travel times are wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too long

[cifrelettere]

Walk 3 hours to chop and entire tree down in 5 seconds.

Seriously...work times need to be longer and travel times need to be wayyyyyyyyyy shorter, especially since the colonists will walk to grab 1 item 10 times rather than just move 10 at once and it's incredibly hard/annoying to change that behavior without fiddling with activity priorites.

[The Former]

Originally posted by antlucasexe:

I'll give you an example. I started a new game on the seed JIBBER-JABBER and built my first camp quite close to the crash site to get going quickly. But I really wanted to build my main base over on the plateau looking out at the moon, so when I started constructing real buildings I put them over there. I thought that the distance from my stockpiles to the construction sites wouldn't be too bad, but as it turned out my people spent the majority of the day transporting mats and then running back and forth to eat or sleep. And thats before I even began to migrate the stockpiles. I don't consider that a huge distance in the grand scheme of the map, but it still took forever to build and brought most of my people to the brink of meltdown - and the majority of that was travel time.

I know that if I had stayed at the site near the crash pod I could have built everything up much faster and with far less fuss, but I didn't want to have to settle for a site strewn with wreckage and impact craters.

I'm fairly new, so its entirely possible that I did everything in an inefficient way, but I feel like it would be nice to be able to choose a place to build without being too tied down to the original crash site.

I'd say the best idea there would be... Probably to build "halfway stockpiles" and move everything from where it is to where you want it to be. Build stockpiles halfway, get rid of the old ones. Once that phase is done, do it again near the final site.

Big moves like that are, like in real life, best done with great attention to logistics. And make no mistake, it probably is quite a big move. It's sounding like perhaps the deceptively massive scale of the maps is what's throwing a lot of people. Perhaps we're used to Rimworld or perhaps another game, but it seems we're expecting the map to be a fairly confined playground when in reality, maps in this game are grand environs all on their own.

(Which is why I do think the notion of vehicular transports is a great idea.)

[cifrelettere]

I don't know why people are responding to the obvious problem of long travel times with patronizing suggestions that are equivalent to 'git gud'. The game is not challenging. This isn't a thread asking for help. This is a thread pointing out that the travel times are absolutely insane compared to the actual labor times and it forces people to build everything as smushed together as possible and never, ever try to set up separate bases or even camps because it's simply not efficient.

[Summanus]

Well, I learnt from my mistake. Took too long to setup any kind of building even a short distance away from my starting camp that all my people died in an extreme cold snap during the first winter because I couldn't setup enough heating quickly enough

I think in future I'll do what the game clearly wants you to do and setup my main camp right next to where the pod originally crashes.

[bkline1187]

Originally posted by antlucasexe:

Well, I learnt from my mistake. Took too long to setup any kind of building even a short distance away from my starting camp that all my people died in an extreme cold snap during the first winter because I couldn't setup enough heating quickly enough

I think in future I'll do what the game clearly wants you to do and setup my main camp right next to where the pod originally crashes.

Not necessarily, you just have to prioritize what’s important. I typically setup a camp near the location I want to build my actual base so there isn’t much travel time needed and slowly work on it. However you really want to discover clothblossum and skin bark as early as possible so you can start preparing for winter. Without Vivian it’s gonna take some time to make so have your dedicated crafter(s) work on clothes while everyone else works on the base.

My biggest issue is controlling how much scavenging I do early on, cause the more you scavenge the more you’re gonna need to move later on. I usually scavenge until I’ve discovered fuel and metal alloy so I can research flamethrowers and then I start working on defenses. Once I’ve got my base pretty well on its way I’ll go back to scavenging.

[Ralesk]

Originally posted by antlucasexe:

Well, I learnt from my mistake. Took too long to setup any kind of building even a short distance away from my starting camp that all my people died in an extreme cold snap during the first winter because I couldn't setup enough heating quickly enough

I think in future I'll do what the game clearly wants you to do and setup my main camp right next to where the pod originally crashes.

I feel like the first year (or two) is about immediate survival — the rest is about thriving. If you spend too much time wandering, your survival chances diminish, unless your starting point was literally uninhabitable. If you later feel like you could do with a nicer house to hang out at for the rest of your life, nothing's stopping you from migrating to it once you're safe from starvation and the elements.

[Medieval Peanut]

Originally posted by cifrelettere:

I don't know why people are responding to the obvious problem of long travel times with patronizing suggestions that are equivalent to 'git gud'. The game is not challenging. This isn't a thread asking for help. This is a thread pointing out that the travel times are absolutely insane compared to the actual labor times and it forces people to build everything as smushed together as possible and never, ever try to set up separate bases or even camps because it's simply not efficient.

It's because people are playing this game "wrong", i made the same mistake. A lot of us are playing it like a base building game (because that's what we really want) but the intention is to get off planet not build a base.

The "trap" playing with upgraded bases is that you need more people dedicated to do more tasks which means you need more stuff like food, clothes, fuel and weapons. travel takes forever because the intent was never to take over the map. The new mode isn't any better because the same issues carry over because they are core mechanics like the attacks and travel time etc.

Outside wood and some basics you need to travel further and further away to get stone and metal etc the longer you play. Also you need more fuels and resources to repair things and for me, the bugs are attacking my perimeters to get into food areas and i can't put 40 turrents around my core base and fields because I need more resources which means I need more people that will never appear. I mean, they only added 10, maybe 12 total characters, there's about 6 that are "good" picks and the other half have negative things they bring to your base.

You really dont need anything better than wood for housing, stone takes too many resources and carbon fiber just an insane amount of fuel and it doesn't really mean anything in terms of protection from bugs (who are relentless and will attack the base until they get in) or the elements (which a fire and armor is better than sweaters and other gear). It's better to keep it small to keep the attack algorithm sending small waves and focus on the sprint to get off planet and even the trade post scenario has the same issues with all these things. If you try to do anything else, you'll eventually fail and it becomes harder and harder to manage. You wont get replacement people or kids or anything intended for a long term game (like quarries, remote outposts with their own people to move resources, etc etc).

Overall it is a fun game but this is a classic example of how the dev team built the game and how the players want to play the game are not aligned. based on previous feedback and suggestions, the devs have no intention to alter the game to how the players want to play it, so... hopefully if they make a sequel they will keep that into consideration?

[The Former]

Originally posted by cifrelettere:

I don't know why people are responding to the obvious problem of long travel times with patronizing suggestions that are equivalent to 'git gud'. The game is not challenging. This isn't a thread asking for help. This is a thread pointing out that the travel times are absolutely insane compared to the actual labor times and it forces people to build everything as smushed together as possible and never, ever try to set up separate bases or even camps because it's simply not efficient.

With respect to your good intentions with this post, while I can't speak to others' comments, the purpose of my posts has been twofold:

1. Establish why I believe the long travel times are intentionally a part of the survival aspect of this game. (That being, that undertaking gathering operations far outside your base should in fact demand a great deal of thought to logistics.)

2. Establish how I work around them to mitigate travel times to a point that I hardly notice them most days. (For OP's issue specifically, it's a case of... You can absolutely cut down on travel times to get wood by planting a plentiful grove. My evergreens provide 500 wood per harvest and that wood is stored in sheds right next to the grove, we barely travel at all for it.)

I have a reasonably large base and am able to get everything that needs doing in a day done, and also make progress on special projects, with only five people.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2984572623

This is rather broader than I'd build a base in say, Rimworld, yet everything gets done. As Medieval Peanut observes the point of this game isn't to take over the map. Camps are a good idea, particularly for things like mining in the mid to late game, but they should be just that: Camps. They probably shouldn't maintain permanence once they've served their purpose.

In other words, you're saying the game isn't challenging and that this isn't a thread asking for help, but in a sense it is clearly challenging in the sense that you're having difficulty working efficiently because you're making your people travel too far. This is a survival base-builder, and in such games (as you may know, forgive me for patronizing if you do), perhaps the primary source of challenge in the core loop is economy of time, at least 50% of which is about travel time specifically.

In short, efficiency is king, so think like an engineer!

[Seelander]

You really should take calculated decisions, when is it worth the travel time vs when it is not, planting instead. You really shouldnt have any issue with transportation time if played right.

If you need large volumes of wood, there are work arounds such building your main building out of hay only adding the desired ressources on the last layer if you want higher HP, alternative is to build all based on a hay floor, put up fortifications up protection your walls... these are just examples, plenty of ways to get anything to work, comes with experience :-)

[Summanus]

How necessary would people say it is to scavenge the escape pod you came down in? I've had starts where I've found great stuff like additional weapons, pieces of armour etc from it so it seems like its quite important, but maybe you can get that stuff from all wrecks - I'm not sure. Is there a difference between loot from the escape pod and from other salvage sites?

If theres no real difference, then theres nothing necessarily tying you to that spot, but if its important to salvage the pod then that really keeps you from roaming too far, at least in the beginning.

[The Former]

Originally posted by antlucasexe:

How necessary would people say it is to scavenge the escape pod you came down in? I've had starts where I've found great stuff like additional weapons, pieces of armour etc from it so it seems like its quite important, but maybe you can get that stuff from all wrecks - I'm not sure. Is there a difference between loot from the escape pod and from other salvage sites?

If theres no real difference, then theres nothing necessarily tying you to that spot, but if its important to salvage the pod then that really keeps you from roaming too far, at least in the beginning.

It's a gamble worth taking most days, but I wouldn't necessarily call it crucial. Pieces of ship crash all over and it seems to me you can salvage about the same kinds of stuff from any ship part (I've gotten pulse snipers and pulse rifles from what appear to be engine parts), so as long as you settle somewhere relatively close to a piece of ship, I think you're in good shape.

[Summanus]

Originally posted by Lockfågel, Paradoxriddaren:

Originally posted by antlucasexe:

How necessary would people say it is to scavenge the escape pod you came down in? I've had starts where I've found great stuff like additional weapons, pieces of armour etc from it so it seems like its quite important, but maybe you can get that stuff from all wrecks - I'm not sure. Is there a difference between loot from the escape pod and from other salvage sites?

If theres no real difference, then theres nothing necessarily tying you to that spot, but if its important to salvage the pod then that really keeps you from roaming too far, at least in the beginning.

It's a gamble worth taking most days, but I wouldn't necessarily call it crucial. Pieces of ship crash all over and it seems to me you can salvage about the same kinds of stuff from any ship part (I've gotten pulse snipers and pulse rifles from what appear to be engine parts), so as long as you settle somewhere relatively close to a piece of ship, I think you're in good shape.

Thanks - that gives a bit more scope as to how far I can move at the start then

[plc.reboot]

This is not the first thread on this problem.
The AI in general is more than a bit stupid when it comes to travel times. A character will happily leave on a 4 hour journey an hour before bedtime, then get there, take one swing of a pickaxe against a nest to mine carbon, then run back without the carbon just in time to get no sleep at all and be a wilting zombie for the next day. This is all ridiculous.
There are ways to lessen the problem, including building a stockpile as was mentioned, and use Simon, Talas and Laara as was mentioned.
There is a huge list of things the game needs to really sort this stuff out.
However, I still play it all the time.

[The Former]

Originally posted by plc.reboot:

This is not the first thread on this problem.
The AI in general is more than a bit stupid when it comes to travel times. A character will happily leave on a 4 hour journey an hour before bedtime, then get there, take one swing of a pickaxe against a nest to mine carbon, then run back without the carbon just in time to get no sleep at all and be a wilting zombie for the next day. This is all ridiculous.
There are ways to lessen the problem, including building a stockpile as was mentioned, and use Simon, Talas and Laara as was mentioned.
There is a huge list of things the game needs to really sort this stuff out.
However, I still play it all the time.

This is where scheduling becomes important. For my colony, it's awake (or sleep in) at 4:00 to do whatever you want, work from 7:00 to 16:00, leisure only from 16:00 to 18:00, then sleep from 18:00 to (at least) 4:00. This ensures no one starts any out-of-the-way projects so late that they don't have time to sleep.

[plc.reboot]

Originally posted by Lockfågel, Paradoxriddaren:

This is where scheduling becomes important. For my colony, it's awake (or sleep in) at 4:00 to do whatever you want, work from 7:00 to 16:00, leisure only from 16:00 to 18:00, then sleep from 18:00 to (at least) 4:00. This ensures no one starts any out-of-the-way projects so late that they don't have time to sleep.

I do the same thing (have a couple of hours of 'relax' before bed) but that isn't enough if the travel time is four hours, which it certainly can be when you're mining a far-away nest, or something like that.

[cifrelettere]

Originally posted by Lockfågel, Paradoxriddaren:

In short, efficiency is king, so think like an engineer!

Yeah, and the gameplay devolves into just cramping everything on top of each other and micromanaging idiotic pawns and so that they don't grab 1 stick from halfway across the map.

So sure, yes, you're describing the game as it is. I understand that. My point is that the game as it is is not as good as it could be, hence why I'm saying that travel times are way too long. Do you really think it's good for the game that a pawn can spend half a day moving something from one stockpile to another, meanwhile you can throw up an entire stone structure like it's Fortnite?

The fact of the matter is similar, better games have done logistics and building better (Oxygen Not Included, Space Haven, Rimworld, etc.) because they balance travel times with action times. If they didn't, the games would be mostly about cramping everything together as close as possible as this game is. Don't move your camp. Make sure every facility has a stockpile for inputs and outputs immediately next to it. Micromanage your pawns. Put all farms and ranches immediately near your base. Don't bother hunting once you have ranches. Does that make sense? Half the game systems are trivialized and you're penalized for using them because the game forces you to smash everything together because travel times are so absolutely absurd compared to action times.

We're drowning here and you're describing the water.