few thoughts about the game...

[failsafe]

First thing: I like this game, it seems to be a nice guilty-pleasure thing, so most probably I will enjoy playing it ;-). I will write below few negative things about Patron - only negative, but it doesnt matter - obviously - that I see only bad things in this game.

1. Tutorial - yeah, another case of tutorial made by people who believe that absolutely crucial thing within the game is... moving a screen. And yes, I know that there are many tutorials out there made exactly the same way - forcing people to move screen, like if it was something that nobody knows. I dont use tutorials very often, but sometimes I do. In this case I didnt learn anything. I already knew how to move screen... guess what: it works pretty much the same in most games. But after doing tutorial I didnt know how to earn gold or how to search for stone or iron ore deposits. It didnt explain how much time child needs to become an adult... actually it didnt explain anything, just made me build few buildings.

2. Economical figures per month and per year - there is a lot of mess here. First thing: most critical display in the game "game status window" (by the way: is it really a game status thing???) shows aggregated figures like total food ect, and this is good, but when I hoover over I get information about monthly loss and income. This could be usefull if it was broken into regular income/loss and extra income/loss. Extra would be cost of buildings and/or trade, while regular would be taxation and costs of labour, building upkeep ect. At this stage game doesnt really offer what is a base, regular cost of keeping town alive. Im not saying that this is very bad thing, but if there is one thing that I could call "game status window" (more "town status" actually) this should be there rather than influence points (these can be stated in only place where I can spend them). Now, lets move on: all buildings state costs and income... per year. And broken into aggregated per building and per worker (this is actually a great thing!). So, if You follow me: we have monthly income/loss in game status window and yearly income and loss in windows per each building. With no real economical display (showing my regular costs and profits) it means that I have to do math in my head. My gatherer produces 687 / year. Hunter 309. Fiushermen 1440. 2436 in total, which gives 203 per month (against 250 stated in game status window). So, as you can see there is a difference between my regular production (I assume this could be a long-term working figure) and some extra food production (that happened due to unknown reasons). Honestly, I'd like these figures to be available in most important screen in the game both in per month and per annum figures. I like economical layer in these games. Running around many buildings, noting figures, calculating them and doing all the thinking between is okay... once per a while.

3. Sawmill... why the hell sawmill is producing firewood instead of planks or construction wood? Due to unknown reasons a lumberjack (forester) is not only foresting area and cutting trees but also supplying construction material. Due to unknown reasons buildings and technologies require raw logs, while firewood - as obvioulsy more sophisiticated product - requires additional building. It doesnt make sense and it kind of makes the whole process laughable. Just as a reminder - in very first settlers we had sawmill that actually processed logs into planks and most games have followed this pattern... because it makes sense and is quite realistic.

4. Port and trading - this building is totally OP. Game is almost won after building it. It is okay, in general, since Patron is more like a guilty pleasure game rather than real town builder, but just one thing: why there is no real interaction between this building and rest of the world? Even in Banished we had traders actually visiting trading posts. In Tropico we see ships arriving, loading goods and leaving.

5. Construction menu - buildings are shown as icons, and these icons are bit small'ish. Particular names and details are being shown after hoovering, but this new display is being shown above all other icons (icons of other buildings). Bigger icons and buildings name shown below icons would be more usefull. Not to mention that logics behind why particular buildings are in each tab is bit... awkward. So, for example: we have port in city buildings, but roads and bridges and road signs are in separate, own tab. I guess having "infrastructure" tab should be more natural solution. Production buildings include all production buildings, like fisherman and hunting lodge. I understand that this makes sense from certain perspective. But as a result we have two tabs - city buildings and production buildings that are spammed with everything while roads tab and farms are almost empty. I guess having "food production and health" tab be more conveniant, as well as moving some things into infrastructure tab. The thing is that I dont really see what devs wanted to gain by doing what they did. Sometimes the reason for some decisions is to minimise number of icons being visible on main screen. I guess it is not the case since we have 6+1 icons, quite a lot actually. I could show how other games did this much better, but there is no point in this.

6. Visuals - I'm not sure whether it is my comp or not, but game doesnt look that good as it should. Land itself seems empty, there is mostly grass or sand, sometimes few bushes and flowers or whatever. Winter is terrible - all this white snow shows how flat everything is. We do have winters in my country and believe me: there are more things to see even after heavy snowfall, not to mention that land is never that flat and snow comes in a variety of shades ect. Oh, one more thing: I have palms in my town... palms sometimes grow in places where it snows, but it is not really a standard thing.

7. Story mode - last but not least. If this thing was supposed to make a real change withing the game... Im not sure whether it worked or not. The war happening somewhere seems very virtual. We get some objectives to finish, these objectives are tedious, and after few we already understand where it is going. It is boring, sorry to say that. Easiest way to achieve same thing would be saying that this is a colony created by a patron nation and as a colony it should be profitable to owners. Not to mention that a nation fighting a difficult war will be happily waiting few years until I gather few final stones and deliver them... because obviously 249 is not enough, we need 250. It is war, right? You dont win wars with 249... lol. So, dont get me wrong, there is no drama behind this. It is just a list of boring, tedious things that need to be achieved.

Ok, that is it. Now I can play some more ;-). I hope game will move forward and become something more than just another Banished clone.

[cobra_overseergames]

We do like to hear you like Patron and that you will enjoy playing it!🙂

All we can say right now is thank you very much for your well constructed and comprehensive report, we will put this in our "notebook" and see what can we do about the points that you made in the future updates.🙂
We are continuing to work on Patron and we do hope that you will see the progress we will make in the future with new updates, fixes and optimizations.🙂

[failsafe]

One more thing - I've read my "story", and I guess I didnt cover all important stuff ;-P. Dont worry, Im not going to run around with billions of good advices. But, maybe more of a question regardinc certain QoL things.

I think these things could be easy to implement, though Im not a dev, I know nothing about coding, so I might be wrong.

1. Adding option to have grid displayed whenever placing a building - without need to rotate thru all different types of grid.

2. Adding shortcut between "game status window" and "charts". Now when I click on food I have chart with wood being displayed, since wood is (?) first in the list of items in charts. If we could have proper chart displayed this could actually solve some issues I've written about. But we also might need things grouped - for example food: why not have it merged instead of countless items? I guess all those items come handy as well, but for day-2-day management we might just need chart showing income/usage of food in general.

Oh, and in of first sentences in main post I wanted to write "it doesnt MEAN - obviously - that I see only bad things in this game." I dont know why I wrote MATTER instead of MEAN... oh, well, it doesnt... haha... matter. English is not my main language, maybe this is the reason.

[pckirk]

When all grids are off, when you select a building from the building selection box, a mini build grid will be shown as you move the building to its build spot. so you already have #1.

[failsafe]

Simplified yes, but it is not really a full grid, or not the one I'd like to have. It doesnt show other buildings, roads with grids. It is bit annoying when u are trying to do things in a symetrical way. Also, even this simplified grid is not available when placing roads. When pressing "g" game shows better grid with roads visibly highlighted over the terrain - and this one is actually good and usefull, no reason not to have it by default in building mode.

[Winter's Embers]

Originally posted by failsafe:

It is bit annoying when u are trying to do things in a symetrical way.

As a fellow OCD sufferer in games like this, I can only say that, someday, someone will make a city-builder where all the buildings fall within a certain multiple (2, or 4) so that you can actually make things like a city grid of blocks. Instead, we always get these games where one building is 3x3, another is 7x9, another is 8x8, leading to a nightmare for people who just have to have things in a straight line.
And, yes, I know, decorations fill in the grid but I don't want decorations here, there and randomly everywhere, I want buildings that FIT!!!!
Seriously, though, the grid idea is a good one. I've always hated having to manually cycle through all three visuals just build something and playing the game just with the grid constantly active is really immersion-breaking, not to mention ugly!

[failsafe]

After dropping some 30+ hours I decided to check my initial opinion about this game. Obviously I see things in bit different perspective, so here is my final subjective comment ;-)

1. Tutorial - havent played since then, but I guess it is still correct. At the end of the day I've managed to learn everything - thanks to forum and just doing stuff, so it is not that critical, but I think redoing tutorial could help new people, especially that some of those new players are not willing to search for answer outside the game itself. Secondary thing, nothing more.

2. Game status window - I've learnt to use it as much as possible and I've also found some very good features that are not visible at first sight. My biggest issue with GSW is that it is not customizable. I personally would like to have it showing different figures. Some are just not usefull, some - not available now - could come handy in certain stages of game. For example: if we use flowers both for luxuries and dyes we could appreciate adding flowers to GSW - in this case this is one figure that covers two things. And so on, and so forth.

3. Income and outcome for particular products/items is presented very well in form of graphs and I believe this is single most important chart/table in the game. It is actually something that almost single-handed allows managing all resources in the game. Once I've found out about it I've easily transfered my economy from "we need moar people, moar production buildings, moar warehouses and moar everything" to "supply is still below our needs, we can relax and focus on other stuff". Game is much more relaxing, since this tool allows checking actual and historical demand and supply... which means almost everything in terms of creating production agenda. The thing is, however, that is not a thing that can be found easily. As mentioned in my first post - whenever I click on any item in GSW I'd like to be transferd to stock window showing this particular item with this particular graph - it is the easiest and most conveniant way to bind this powerfull tool with GSW. One more thing - regarding items/stock list. If we sort it by volume available and we are checking income/outcome graph, whenever stock list changes (for example this particular item moves down lub up in the table we are being shown graph of the item that took it's place - obviously it is small bug or just not developed thing).

4. Trading - I can confirm that this makes game too easy. In my recent gameplay I didnt place any port or trading post just to keep the game more difficult... but it didnt work that good ;-P. I mean: port or trading post should be a "must have building", but it should not work like a metro station. Goods are being teleported and obviously both demand and supply is unlimited for any products, not to mention that prices are just way too stable. Also, we can easily recieve goods from the king (or send goods to him or church or whatever) without having port or trading post. This might be a secondary thing, but it breaks immersion. And it works much better in Banished where we needed to wait for actual trader visiting our town, and during his visits we could acquire different seeds or livestock - no teleport, just some nice piece of trade.

5. Grid - another thing that bothers me is that all available grids have to be cycled instead of choosing just one (turning it on or off). I miss having building grid being merged with construction menu. I almost always use construction grid whenever placing buildings or roads simple because some objects dont have sharp edges and without proper grid (showing roads with certain colour and straight edges of all objects) I used to missplace stuff.

6. Luxury products - just small issue with these. I guess products like furniture or flowers or whatever are not by any logic limited in use to one social group, thus making them one-group-only stuff doesnt make sense. I dont know if these products are being used by other social groups simply because we dont know where particular members of each group live - there is only one way to find out, and this is by checking tax in particular building, but I never bothered doing this, since when we have all four social groups we have plenty of buildings and I dont enjoy clicking 30-40 houses for this purpose. Also, another thing regarding social groups is that while we have peasants and gentry, they all live in same types of buildings - I guess brick mansion should be considered as a luxury building and be available for gentry only. Peasants and merchants could live in two story buildings, because why not, but since different social groups pay different taxes (which means: they also earn different money) there should be difference for available buildings for each. In my last build I decided to place different buildings in different places, creating more luxury area in very core of the town and just stone houses at outskrits, but... honestly: this wasnt that much visible across my town, at least not from distance. In all citybuilders buildings are differenciated according to economical status - both commercial, industrial and apartments.

7. Weather - I'd love to be able to change weather just for sake of pleasure of watching my town. I got the feeling that most of the time it is raining, or there is a fog or whatever - all this pretty realistic, but actually spoiling a pleasure from seeing things in the game. I dont want to draw attention to other games, but please check Going Medieval (which is more a Rimworld style game than Banished style, so bit different sub-genre) - devs managed to polish visuals to the point where game is actually an eye-candy without totally killing realistic touch.

So, that is it ;-). I've really enjoyed playing this game, I wish it could keep me interested for longer, but I've spent 30+ hours, which is actually quite a lot for me. I must say that game is well developed and many solutions - sometimes not really visible once you start playing - are really good and well thought. So, thumbs up ;-)

[cobra_overseergames]

Thank you very much for your kind words and for your extensive view on our game, we do appreciate it a lot and we love to hear that you liked playing Patron.🙂

We will continue to work on the game, we will take your points into account and hopefully we will make Patron better then it is right now.
Thank you once again!🙂

[redgreen999]

I want to see more vegetation, bushes and stuff at different heights break up the flatness. If the trees were animated to sway in the wind, the world would see more alive. I know that is a big ask, but one can dream.

I wish the camera could go more horizontal even from a bit higher. One cant get a good horizon view from near ground level which would look awesome. As so as you go up a bit in height with the camera it begins to tilt down. Would be able to lock the camera horizintal with a key so you can raise it and see your entire town form that angle.

Access to building textures would be nice for modders to tweak things.

Whats really good about this game, is everything in it works really well. I have not found a single bug. *knocks on wood* That is rare in todays gaming world.

[cobra_overseergames]

Thank you very much, we do work hard to eliminate bugs as much as possible and to improve the game, hopefully to a better version then before.🙂

Also we will put your suggestions in our notebook, and we thank you for giving us your input about Patron) and see what can be done about them in the future.🙂