Building in the Colony is Pointless

[Profugo Barbatus]

I've been kind of thinking and stewing over this for a while, both way back in 2019 playing the old versions, and now with the new version and grinding my way up. Specifically, why construction is so worthless in the game loop.

Think about it, there's more or less three things that manage the game. You place blocks/job blocks, job blocks craft or gather resources, and resources are used to defend against the night and advance the selection of job blocks and resources you have access to.

The running of job blocks, resource gathering, and night defence are more or less entirely out of your hands. You set them up, and off they go. You can technically grab a weapon and join in the defence, but its usually a net negative even with your damage bonus, since unlike the AI guards you'll miss shots - Any contribution you provide will be at a greater resource expense, and is generally only useful when you badly misjudge a threat increase.

So that really leaves building in the players interest. The problem is, building is incredibly shallow and unrewarding in a mechanical sense. There is no functional difference between building an apartment tower and laying out a line of beds on the grass, but the former will take significantly longer to set up, while the game rewards the latter as it actually increases your productivity immediately. Such a structure is often a minor malus, as constructions increase travel time for waking colonists, costing daytime work output. The only situation that building is genuinely rewarded in is gliders, which aren't unlocked until mid game or so, but one structure worth building with one defining metric of value - height, is not really enough to carry the players engagement.

Defences similarly don't benefit from any interesting construction - There's no functional difference between building a wall, and building a 2 block trench, and if you want to build anything that isn't a hedge wall, you'll be waiting for a significant time for your colonists to produce blocks. Since you need to secure a large area to protect those colonists if you intend to scale up production to get enough parts for a wall, your either going to have to limit your footprint, and production by extent, or dig the trench and embrace the cheese. Traps and maze lines promote some mild creativity, but the optimal and cheapest setup is any set of blocks making a single file zig zag through the air. You can build more interesting options, but you need defences now, not later, and interesting options require more resources for no actual benefit.

Job sites are again uninteresting to develop - Once more, the optimal build is both the fastest to set up and the least interesting, with a job block, a colonist, and a crate behind the colonist, and a tool box and grocer every few of these for irregular access. Doing something interesting like building a guild hall, or a factory, or a mill, is again actively discouraged, requiring you to already have significant free resources before you can invest them in building something of interest.

What this all seems to lead to is an active discouragement of building anything of note early on. You are encouraged to focus on functional productions and defence, and maybe once your deeper into the tech tree and population counter, then you can go and add a wall around that trench for looks - but its just for looks.

It leads to the colony feeling very sterile and uninteresting, with visually boring setups like the crafting array feeling necessary well before you have the reasonable ability to pretty them up. These things aren't fun to build, there's nothing interesting to be done while building them, and building something cooler is often counter productive.

So the player ends up idling, standing around because there's very little worth doing for them a lot of the time, waiting for some guys to make a thing. The bed brick grows as production grows, but I don't care about it. And the colonists don't either, seemingly content to live in a box lined up with 150 other dudes. Late game, you've got the resources to change this and we've seen some beautiful builds, but those builds very much are for the sake of building - the game offers no reason to do so.

I'm not expecting any sort of Rimworld level room statistics, but it feels really weird to have this building system while every mechanic at best ignores, if not actively discourages building anything. Or really, the fact that for most of the game loop, the player is a passive observer. I can't craft, my resource gathering effectiveness is limited, my combat contributions are minimal, my building skills are underutilised, and explorations primary focus is finding things for the other characters in the world to work with, not me. If the players doing it right, they're doing nothing at all.

[Tchey]

Hello,

Agreed with OP. It was raised a few times already before, in previous builds.

An expected solution would be to have "room awareness" for at least a few assets, like beds and some workshops.

I mean, it would still work placed on grass under the stars, but it would be significantly better to have "floors + walls + roof" around, and maybe even "at least 3x3x2 or so, to give more and better bonus.

That, and later maybe add some "real colony" stuff, like decorations, quality grades (ie, engraved stones would be better than raw wood, but worst than clay bricks), entertainment too : no need to actually visit the circus, but if there is a circus within XX tiles, then the workers would be more efficient.

[Darth Porgus]

Tchey původně napsal:

Hello,

Agreed with OP. It was raised a few times already before, in previous builds.

An expected solution would be to have "room awareness" for at least a few assets, like beds and some workshops.

I mean, it would still work placed on grass under the stars, but it would be significantly better to have "floors + walls + roof" around, and maybe even "at least 3x3x2 or so, to give more and better bonus.

That, and later maybe add some "real colony" stuff, like decorations, quality grades (ie, engraved stones would be better than raw wood, but worst than clay bricks), entertainment too : no need to actually visit the circus, but if there is a circus within XX tiles, then the workers would be more efficient.

As I already said, I too agree with the OP and your Idea are interesting as well. But I would rather have that maybe it is not necessary to have rooms, but they give a major bonus to production. If it was strictly necassary then a lot of people from the community might get upset for the major change.
My suggestion:
Add workstations that are larger than 1 block and need more than just 1 worker. For example a forge that is 3x3x4 blocks large that is more efficent than multiple 1 block smelters and requires less colonists to opperate.
You would have to build a larger area for the bigger smelter to work.

Also adding more blocks and blocks that add depth would incurage building as well. Just take a look at how many different block variants there are in Minecraft if you need inspiration.

[Tchey]

Darth Porgus původně napsal:

But I would rather have that maybe it is not necessary to have rooms, but they give a major bonus to production

I think it’s exactly what i said : it would still work placed on grass under the stars, but it would be significantly better to have [rooms].

[exelsisxax]

For me a lot of this is related to nightly attacks being extremely straightforward and 'solvable' with some mazing. every incentive is to make everything a block so it fits in the safe zone and put beds near jobs. there's no layered defense, just pure square efficiency so you can support more guards. I think there needs to be a major monster rework, but the 9.0 threat changes make that much more doable in the near future.

moving on to purely building stuff, a lot of it seems to stem from core functions and not numbers. plenty of ad-hoc bonuses and penalties can incentivize more interesting builds but the root of the issue is that the largest falloff in productivity is walking to the job site and bed/job blocks are strictly the most efficient due to near-0 walking optimization. It will be too confusing for new players to offset that major inefficiency with some matrix of production modifiers for specific cases that the game at least right now cannot show to the player.

So take the low-hanging fruit: build into the schedule a fixed amount of time that colonists will use to get food/tools/walk to sites, but will not work. this directly offsets some amount of wasted walk time, so beds can be next door or upstairs with no penalty, and maybe halfway across the colony with negligible penalty. Importantly, this penalizes no playstyle - job+bed blocks work the same (depending where it goes in the daily schedule). This idle time can then hook into some science/colony upgrades and other modifiers.

The second low-hanging fruit: tax the colonists. Why am i not getting colony points from having lots of colonists? I think that colonists should both generate points and add slightly to the base capacity, further promoting growth and expansion. This can help builds by the simple expedient of generating tax when a colonist goes to sleep/wakes up, based on their environment. job+bed blocks give the minimum, enclosed uncrowded rooms with lights and improved beds generate and increase the storage far more. Colony points for everyone, non-prison builds just get more, and all of it is natural and feeds back into the target progression.

Third fruit, maybe not low-hanging. the remaining crux of the problem is space efficiency between the bulk of production jobs that need 1-1.5 blocks of space to work at 100%, and farming type jobs that need 25-100 blocks of space to work at 100% and are required to make inputs for most other jobs. I don't have a precise fix, but i suggest in general offering through science and secondary jobs means of improving the space efficiency of farming jobs. fertilizer maybe that increases growth speed/yield, farming tools that increase harvest rate and eventually harvest multiple plants at a time, container tools that increase farmer storage so they don't need to visit the stockpile as often. farmhand job that can ferry tools and products back and forth for multiple farmers in range? combination farms that can grow trees inside a plot of other plants? forester tools that increases wood yield, tech that increases tree planting density, tool that gives trees a chance to spawn taller? Weirdly, allowing larger plot sizes may increase efficiency with some of these changes if harvesting exceeds overall growth rate, so a single farmer can manage perhaps a 150b farm while producing far more than 2 100b farms with no upgrades/helpers.
Lots of potential, take your pick. with more efficient farms, colonies don't have to pack everything else into the smallest possible area (they still could though). instead of skyscraper farms, you could build metaphorically tall and maximize production through technology, tools, and helper jobs rather than a furious pace of more layers of sky gardens.

I will of course add the nth voice that more jobs should use multiblocks, be directly supported by another job (smeltery +bellows operators, guards + ammo carriers, clerks for scribes) or have requirements. These will all add a lot of interesting diversity to builds, even if it just adds 2-4 different kinds of job square crowding at bare minimum.

Now while i think that bonuses/penalties are absolutely not a fix, they can definitely be powerful secondary supports to a more fundamental mechanic change. Carrots are better than sticks, but 1-2 sticks are definitely good to have if they are clear. the problem with modifiers is that they are complicated and hard to visualize, so fewer is better and ideally only those that can fit into a job/block tooltip ('flax grows faster with a beehive in 10' or similar). These can be modifiers to production of the job, to walking speed, maybe chances to save input materials or produce extra/not use tool durability, as well as from my #1 and #2 to commute time and taxes (less idle or more idle cutting into sleep hours, generating more tax/storage)

Carrots:
bonus to colonists with a nicer room (size/materials/crowding)
bonus to colonists with a decorated room (upgraded bed, cosmetic storage, water, chair)
bonus for good lighting, varies by job (also can work as a stick)
bonus for environment - farmers/farms want excess grass and beehives (flowers/natural pollinator blocks would be great here), forges and fires need a skyline and no nearby wood, scribes need a full roof and walls, etc
bonus for diversity - not having one giant battery for job X, instead synergy between ex. scribes and writers, grinders and cooks, all with very short range

Sticks:
penalty to colonists working within N distance of a bed (visible only?)
penalty/requirement of light level (scribes/writers/researchers and miners mainly)
penalty for environment - malus for excess jobs at high density, too many farms of the same type next to others, farms surrounded by stone/snow/sand

[chippy]

Profugo Barbatus původně napsal:

I think there's multiple, possibly complimentary ways of approaching it.

I think all of this would be awesome. Usually when I plot out job blocks I angle for pure efficiency, and so the placement pattern for job blocks, crates, and beds you describe is pretty spot on. When .90 dropped a couple of friends and I played, sharing a colony between us. As you might imagine, there is a LOT of idling when you have three people in a colony. Because of this, we started actually building structures for job blocks and beds, putting jobs together which seemed related. Of course, this was purely aesthetic- putting a smelter and an anvil together serves no functional purpose- but it felt like there was an actual smithy rather than just rows of jobs.

Having those complementary blocks to encourage such aesthetic builds would be neat, and perhaps even allow for more interplay between jobs. An example would be placing a wood chopping job near your smithy, then designating a drop off point where the worker will deposit firewood. Benefits of doing so rather than just using crates could take many possible forms. Perhaps there's no delay in removing wood from this stack, maybe it auto-fuels the furnace, maybe this wood is drier than crate-bound wood and so it burns more readily which accelerates production. If you went the required route, perhaps firewood can only be placed in these drop off zones, and if they are placed outside (exposed to weather) the wood deteriorates over time or is rendered unusable until it is out of weather for a time.

Obviously, a lot of work would have to take place to institute such systems, and in the end people will always find cheese. Personally, I feel as though such systems could reasonably be developed over the next year or two, perhaps for a full 1.0 release of the game. These systems would appeal to people who enjoy other colony management games, with Rimworld being the obvious biggest candidate. Rimworld's workflow works so well because everything matters but there is a huge variety in how you run your colony. You can run a kitchen in your storage area, sharing a space with your butchering table and keeping the area constantly 0 degrees. If you do so your colonists will constantly be sick from food poisoning, and if you don't refrigerate your storage space (which will be increasingly large) then food will rot, whereas a dedicated food zone with refrigeration is far more energy efficient. That level of complexity which has multiple interconnected variables may be excessive, but something more basic such as simply having a block boost a job in some way is certainly attainable, and having building requirements for maximum efficiency will naturally lead those with the min-max mentality to actually put effort into the colony's design rather than just its pedestrian layout.

I will now list off a few specific examples with both a complementary and a required version of how jobs could interact. Both can be implemented, with complementary blocks boosting above 100% of productivity and required interactions being necessary for 100% productivity, which will make more sense with the first example.

1) Bees can synergize with farmers by both giving and receiving a bonus to productivity.

Complimentary: The bees have to travel less distance to find plants from which to draw nectar, so they make honey faster. As a side effect, crop fields are more readily pollinated so they mature faster. Alternatively, such pollination boost could cause individual plants to have a 10% chance to yield a double harvest, thereby increasing your total harvest. This second boost may be more helpful to players, as a 10% boost to growth rate is meaningless if it still means a crop matures in the night when harvesting is obviously not going to happen.

Required: fields without bees could have a 10-20% chance for a space of crops to fail, as that square was never pollinated. This means that a field will only have 80-90% efficiency, requiring pollination for a guaranteed 100% crop. This doesn't completely hamstring the use of wheat or flax, but it does encourage the min/maxer to put an apiarist job near a field.

If implemented together, the two modifiers to productivity from bees to crops would be both visually and economically impactful, incentivizing both aesthetic and min/max players to associate the two jobs. This yields fields which are not simply massive blocks of 10x10 patches, but instead a mixture of field sizes. Because of their complimentary dimensions to other smaller job types, bees could also promote integrating chickens and berry plots into such monocultures as a function of space maximization.

2) wood choppers can have designated wood stockpiling zones ("woodpiles") which boost anything which uses wood as fuel. Each lettered example is distinct, though some can interrelate.

Complimentary: a) woodpiles are produced as blocks which can be placed, with nearby simply conferring a 10% speed increase, probably the simplest to implement. b) woodpiles are an actual stockpile zone which visually increases with fullness (logs stack atop each other for every X number of logs in the stockpile). This stockpile

Required: a) firewood stored in the stockpile becomes "damp firewood". This in turn could yield either longer crafting times or 1-2 more wood per recipe used in the furnace or oven, with a similar system being used for other fuels. b) the crate stockpile simply doesn't allow for storage of firewood.

Again, the focus here is both visual and economic boosts which enhance both aesthetic and efficient players.

3) Miners benefit from well lit areas
Complimentary: being in a bright area increases mining speed
Required: a) Miners mine slower b) miners sometimes accidentally mine stone instead of ore c) miners break tools more quickly

Really, lighting can apply to all jobs. There is currently no incentive to light a place up as monster spawns are unaffected by them (which is a good thing imo) and you have a personal light. That said, the goal of both improving aesthetics and productivity remains the focus of changes, which I believe lighting-based productivity modifiers would do.

Lastly, implementation of these mechanics. If the system is too opaque for a player to figure out, it simply won't be fun. In this case, perhaps a system could be implemented which not only helps people understand these new mechanics, but also actually interact with the colonists. This would be achieved by giving workers floating dialogue boxes when interacted with which hint at their needs. For example, a farmer without bees could say "Seems like we're just not getting enough pollination out here", or "pollinating by hand is such a chore" (perhaps explaining what farmers are doing just walking around fully planted fields) or more bluntly "Bees would probably stop these crop failures we've been having". The goal would of course be to merely hint, rather than outright say, what could be useful. Rather than "I need a woodpile", the colonist would say "If only I didn't have to keep digging around for wood in the crate" or "I wish I didn't have to use damp wood", hinting at how the job could be optimized. This would in turn give some life to the colonists, which currently just stare into the void. Such interactions would give you as the player something to do in the production downtime, going around your colony to both pursue efficiency and actually talk to the NPCs. This system would add depth to the game without adding opaque tedium, making the game more fun players regardless of whether they are min-maxers or aesthetically focused. Old players will still be able to get away with some of their methods while being encouraged to pursue new ones. New players will be greeted with a more nuanced game which has less idle time and more interaction.

[Snebular]

I haven't had time to read everyone's posts yet but, something I can think of that would at least make building not punishing to the player for building a living area. Would be giving the colonists a move speed bonus if they slept with say a roof over them, or how ever you want to make the room recognition work, that way they could be given a way to make work areas and living areas more distinct while only removing the progress loss of travel time and not necessarily being given an actual production bonus unless other requirements are also met if you want to add that.

the movement speed could also have the effect of not needing a job block right behind every worker if they keep the buff all day you could space them out more giving the player the option to have a more aesthetic build without sacrificing much productivity

[FriendCalledFive]

Pipliznl původně napsal:

Thank you for the well thought out and detailed response! I do agree that this is an issue. The problem is - how do we fix it? We tried to improve on it with the traps + harvesters&sources features. We could require more complexity (beekeepers must have flower fields nearby, things like that), but that would still lead to repetitive patterns in the end - but now they are more annoying to set up.

Specific solutions are very welcome :D

I don't actually have the game yet, but am a huge Oxygen Not Included fan, and the way that handles rooms is a very good concept. If you give the characters a bedroom they get a morale buff, as does making it prettier with other furniture and decorations, and when they have high morale they are faster and more productive.

[Trav]

Eco is perfect game to copy for how they manage rooms. Workbenches need to be inside rooms built of certain material tiers.

[Knack]

Pipliznl původně napsal:

Thank you for the well thought out and detailed response! I do agree that this is an issue. The problem is - how do we fix it? We tried to improve on it with the traps + harvesters&sources features. We could require more complexity (beekeepers must have flower fields nearby, things like that), but that would still lead to repetitive patterns in the end - but now they are more annoying to set up.

Specific solutions are very welcome :D

Simple:
Give us better building tools.

Most important: A blueprint system.

Extend the Digger/Builder Jobs by giving the option to specify how big and how deep the area should be in addition to the existing selection system.
Make different geometric shapes possible. (Circle, ...)
Give the option to set some kind of markers so we are able to align buildings, walls and paths in an easy way instead of having to run multiple times over the field painting everyting with straw.
I often use the digger area as marker, but they are not allowed to overlap so I have to use straw again.

Better than forcing to build specific things is to give tools and options to follow the own creativity.

[Invictus]

I am a long time fan of colony games, and I also like incremental games (not to be confused with idle games), so I really like the concept of this game. I have some suggestions as well. I will try to be concise and include everything in bullet points for facilitate reading:

- Zombies should be able to attack blocks, and only certain Tier of zombies should be able to destroy certain blocks (e.g., Tier 1 zombies can destroy leaves, but not stone walls).
- If they have an easy path to the flag, they will not attack blocks, but use the "easy way".
- We should have doors, which they would be able to target, and be weaker than walls.
- Zombies should also be able to spit up to certain height in arc, so you would need walls to stop them. Spit is weaker than melee attacks, but if they have villagers in range, they will attack them before going in.
- Certain jobs could have bonuses when being enclosed in a house (building with walls, roof, and a door), and grouped together or with certain other jobs. That way the game incentivizes you to create themed buildings.

All the above would help what we already have. I have other ideas, but would be much more complex / would have to be thought more in order for them to be fleshed out.

For example, recover happines to some extent but in a different way, having certain furniture in the room, quality food, etc., meaning that happy villagers may work longer hours / faster, so there is also a benefit for doing that other than roleplaying.

[Darth Porgus]

Knack původně napsal:

Pipliznl původně napsal:

Thank you for the well thought out and detailed response! I do agree that this is an issue. The problem is - how do we fix it? We tried to improve on it with the traps + harvesters&sources features. We could require more complexity (beekeepers must have flower fields nearby, things like that), but that would still lead to repetitive patterns in the end - but now they are more annoying to set up.

Specific solutions are very welcome :D

Simple:
Give us better building tools.

And more different building blocks to add more detail.

[Invictus]

Darth Porgus původně napsal:

Knack původně napsal:

Simple:
Give us better building tools.

And more different building blocks to add more detail.

Those solutions work for you creative people (and also would be nice to have too, but is not the key point of this thread).

Practical people just want for the game to need arranging things differently also for gameplay purposes.

[exelsisxax]

Agreed. better building tools and more blocks are important but a completely separate issue. Fundamentally the game mechanics push you to make the most ugly crammed-together pile and no amount of fancy templates, nice blocks, and better building commands will solve it (though again i do want those). the game mechanics are the problem, they need to be changed to solve the problem.

[Assailer]

Build private rooms for people with furniture to get performance boost?

Add level up, training facilities, perhaps track townies age?

Social areas, temples to create miracles (harvest boost, bonus damage, walking speed bonus etc.) which are completely optional, but can speed up progression.

Require to nominate leaders, lords which will have additional needs like special rooms? Failing to provide could have negative effect to performance.

Add quests, adventures? Send townies to explore, fight boss spawns?

I'm not asking for Rimworld/Dwarf Fortress here, but having added complexity could make it a more interesting game.

You guys are not the fastest developers around :) Anyways, have a great 2023!

[TheRogon]

Expanding on the building/digging mechanics could help. In addition to drawing out a space there could be set size selectors. Would make for laying out multiple individual rooms faster and more appealing if we only need to touch the one spot in front of us to get a 4x4x4 dig-out with an attached construction spot (that does not automatically add a colonist).