Why can't I start a new timeline in prologue/chapter 1?

[berserker.brisket]

There are a hand full of achievements that can only be gotten in the prologue and chapter 1 meaning that you are required to start at least 1 new profile in order to 100 percent the game and while that's not a massive deal it is quite annoying. It also seems like a bit of a game play flaw as during chapter 1 you gain many inspirations that you do not gain when you start a new timeline as well as not having any infrastructure that you would have if you went though it. Because of that it is much harder to get anything done has it already starts marching towards dooms when you have nothing.

PS I also think it's a bit weird that most buildings look the same. For instance a tower mainframe and a VR mainframe factory look the same and so it's hard to tell what parts of your base do what at a glance unless you have structure view on. Still an amazing game but there is certainly some odd things and flaws.

[Fluid]

You do actually get the inspirations, you may notice that some of the internal robotics are boosted from the beginning, for example the Network Attendant ones iirc.
But yeah it's pretty oof that you can't 100% the achievements on a single file.

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)]

The premise of chapter one and the prologue is that you don't have a bunch of things unlocked. Being able to start it on a new timeline would just be super broken, and a constant source of bugs.

It's much more straightforward for someone to just start a new profile for their one alternate playthrough of the prologue and chapter one. The alternative is deep code surgery that would bring a halt to all the other work on the game (I am just one person), and leave things buggy for a long time.

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On starting new timelines, you have a ton of inspirations already pre-loaded, giving you close to the equivalent from chapter one. On top of that, you have a giant pile of resources so that you can build pretty much all of your major structures in a single turn, before even doing much else.

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On the buildings thing, a lot of buildings are not even visibly different from human structures, as in your stuff is inside a human structure. So there's no scenario where you can tell at a glance without icons what things are, universally, everywhere. It's also almost always irrelevant, as once you build a building, you usually don't have to go back to it unless something is wrong. And if something is wrong, there's a panel that lets you jump right to it.

[berserker.brisket]

OH I didn't know you were a solo developer? I assumed it was a team from the fact that guides were written by multiple people from hooded horse. Anyway I get it if it isn't possible to do without ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with deep code because it's not a big enough problem to warrant that. Oh by the way I saw that when starting a new timeline there was an option for what danger the timeline was facing but there was only one option. What is the plan with that some sort of future DLCs?

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)]

No worries at all, and glad the explanation makes sense!

For the danger types, for the most part I think that is going to be the domain of mods, but it was honestly just a thing I thought "you know, I may want to do multiple of these," and so made an option for both purposes.

As things have progressed, I've felt more and more like keeping to one set of dooms makes more sense, and having more things that swap out dooms for other ones based on your actions makes it more reactive, rather than choosing from a dropdown before you start a timeline.

In general, I don't plan on expanding much on "things you choose from a dropdown before you start," but instead leaning heavily on "things you choose to do once you're in there," as that's more flexible. But I wanted to have options for modders in particular, and you never know what inspiration might strike, too.

There are some things that also modders create and then donate to the game, and with credit I then vet them, make adjustments as needed, and include those. So sometimes even if I don't personally have a thing I am planning on doing, that can wind up making it into the main game if it doesn't throw off the entire balance or cause other problems.

I'm currently working on an alternative path through chapter one for people who feel like the current one is too human-centric and too rail-road-y, but that's more of an onboarding thing. Beyond that, most of my focus is on stuff that is for chapter 2+, and which just keeps expanding options more and more (some things I also add that are available starting in chapter 1, but are just as viable later, too -- so there's a mix).