Lighter Treatment Tweak

[Ravenkana]

Lighter Treatment is a good mechanic since it gives you another tool for controlling resolve, but as it is I feel like it's too cheesy and easy to use. It allows a player to be too aggressive and take unnecessary and stupid risks- and then bounce back from it. There have been multiple situations where I have two races both in the negatives, but have been able to keep them going through the storm by flicking light treatment on and off. I believe the intent is to have Light Treatment as a temporary bandage for players to use when something goes awry, not as a powertool to allow hyper aggressive plays.

I propose changing light treatment by giving it a cooldown. Not one based on time, however- but one based on season. Basically, this would make it more impactful, an actual choice, and give an increased level of engagement with the setting. It would feel a bit less like a game mechanic and more like a decree the governor of the village is making for the season.

The way it works is that, every season, you can favor one race exactly once. You can unfavor a race as many times as you like (ie, a maximum of two) but you can't favor more than one time. This means you can still use it as a tool to get resolve up to finish a reputation point or stop angry harpies from flying the coop, but you can't flick it on and off to avoid your punishment for stupid mistakes.

An Example Scenario:
In Drizzle, Lizards are at 13 Resolve and I want reputation to unlock a new blueprint. I give them lighter treatment, ignoring Beavers and Humans for the time being.
In Clearance, I uncover Beaver Traders so I stop favoring Lizards. Beavers are stable, but not great, humans are fine.
In Storm, Beavers plummet enough to start leaving, so I favor them as a stop-gap measure. Just before the Lizards get angry enough to leave, the glade event resolves and I stop favoring anyone.

TL;DR Lighter Treatment should have a seasonal cooldown so players can't use it to cheese the system.

[Fifi]

Juggling Resolve feels cheesy AF. Maybe add a cooldown to favored race switch?

Just did the daily expedition on P5, Beaver Lizard Harpies, opened first glade: Convicts (-8 Global Resolve when working on it). Thought about giving up right there as all three races go negative. Remembered about juggling resolve by quickly switching favored race so that you never go to 0. It was an intense time, but definitely doable without the risk of losing anyone.

Thing is, I don't feel good doing this... it felt like cheese, it was not fun doing it. I would honestly love if there was a cooldown added to switching favored race or some other cost to switching it/enabling it for a race.

idk about you, but I really like this game for its usually chill atmosphere, but juggling favor felt like an active combat scenario in other games, which I am so glad this game doesnt have.

Also I am sure this technique has its limits and wont help a mid or late game failing settlement, when the resolve maluses are too high to overcome. Still felt like not a good experience early game.

[alexshiro]

Tbh I think they should just not leave while they're in juggling range, isn't really compelling gameplay, might as well not be in

[DG]

At high prestige the morale drops a lot faster and people leave much faster so the juggling is only so effective. You can also juggle on sacrificing coal, and possibly other areas, so it might be inherent from the mechanics,

The drop of morale is so slow on viceroy you can just start the storm on decent morale and it never gets to zero before the storm ends, despite it notionally being negative. That's quite cheesy too. You really only see the fully balanced game with full danger at higher prestige.

[Narandia]

if not seasonal then maybe locking it in for a few minutes, so its more of a deliberate choice. Being able to juggle resolve in storm definitely feels pretty cheesy.

[Lonestead]

I agree there. Sometimes it feels really cheesy to get through the storm turning it on and off.

[Kalisa]

perhaps have it take time to come into effect as well, so every 30 seconds or what ever time frame you get 1 resolve on the target and remove 1 resolve from the other races well its active, if u turn it off, it would still take that 30 seconds per point? theres lots of ways to balance it but agree its alittle too cheezable in its current iteration.

[DG]

You can do the same with sacrificing fuel. Let people get unhappy, sacrifice fuel, their morale goes up, stop the fuel and let it morale slowly drop again, and repeat. You can do the same with building bonuses, let morale drop, put people in buildings, then move them out later and let morale drop again. This tactic might be intrinsic to the design and possibly not worth stamping out.

[Narandia]

Originally posted by Kalisa:

perhaps have it take time to come into effect as well, so every 30 seconds or what ever time frame you get 1 resolve on the target and remove 1 resolve from the other races well its active, if u turn it off, it would still take that 30 seconds per point? theres lots of ways to balance it but agree its alittle too cheezable in its current iteration.

That might be a possible approach, though it would vary depending on how fast normal resolve changes for the species in play anyway. On the upside, it could make you have to consider being more proactive with it (starting well before the storm starts. I think it might be more intended to be an emergency resort though. Like consumption control measures or buying some goodies from a trader to help resolve will take some time to actually kick in, on top of waiting for the resolve to increase as a result.

[Ravenkana]

Originally posted by DG:

You can do the same with sacrificing fuel. Let people get unhappy, sacrifice fuel, their morale goes up, stop the fuel and let it morale slowly drop again, and repeat. You can do the same with building bonuses, let morale drop, put people in buildings, then move them out later and let morale drop again. This tactic might be intrinsic to the design and possibly not worth stamping out.

Those methods require investment in infrastructure and/or the consumption of resources. You have to pick the right blueprint and then build the building (with the exception of mines, blightposts, and hearths) to get the worker bonus and a worker in that building might not do any useful work. Sacrificing at the hearth just flat out consumes the resources; it is shockingly easy to run out of fuel if you sacrifice in the Coral biome.

Conversely, lighter treatment is effectively free and can be flipped on and off instantly. It's especially powerful if you have humans and lizards since the former have such a high resolve base and the latter take forever to drop into the negatives.

[Silberfuchs]

Well, higher prestige difficulties already attack this cheese quite a bit.
I mean the +100% speed for losing resolve (the thing lizards are good at) and later on the much longer storm seasons hit this "strategy" real hard.

Lower difficulties allow this cheese, and quite a few more. Trading for example can be used by experienced players to win real quick, either with cornerstones related to trading, by solving all issues with Amber real fast, or by rushing into tools, etc.

In short:
Players that have figured out how to win at high prestige levels can use those strategies to roflstomp lower difficulties.

[DG]

On second look, I've realised that because you've found something in the game you don't want to do, and instead of ignoring it (not using it yourself) you've decided that the game designers intention is that it shouldn't be there, so you want to introduce a rule change that will hinder, frustrate, and annoy all players? If someone makes a mistake in favouring they will want to just click again and correct it.

[Lonestead]

Originally posted by DG:

On second look, I've realised that because you've found something in the game you don't want to do, and instead of ignoring it (not using it yourself) you've decided that the game designers intention is that it shouldn't be there, so you want to introduce a rule change that will hinder, frustrate, and annoy all players? If someone makes a mistake in favouring they will want to just click again and correct it.

You can still add a grace period where you can remove it again if you misclicked. Noone said that the system should be removed, but in is current form it feels like some kind mobile clicker without penalty shifting the favour around again and again. Cannot imagine that it was designed with this in mind in the first place. Simple cooldowns etc. All other examples you listed need something to do it like resource investment etc. That is absolutely not comparable to just clicking around.