Possible to adjust number of people working in buildings? Like Academy / Kiln?

[Oddible]

I don't seem to see that it is possible to adjust or stop people working in a building like the academy or kiln. If things get desperate I want to abandon research and send them to do other things - is this possible without just destroying the building?

For instance, I have a kiln but zero clay. I absolutely do not need those 3 people working that kiln but I can't seem to remove or stop them.

[Banisha]

I want to know that too ;)

[Waladil]

There isn't a direct way, but that's the value to the town center saving resources when you destroy buildings. With both of the upgrades, you can destroy buildings for 100% refund, free up your workers (and lift too) and rebuild them later. It's not perfect but it works.

[Oddible]

Seems like a game design flaw. I can't imaging the designers expect us to have to delete our kiln and other buildings repeatedly to solve for personnel distribution.

[Jagulars]

I think the rationale behind it, is that once people are educated in one job, they just can't switch to another.

[gabgab01]

it seems to me that people are treated like a ressource by the game, same way you can't reallocate the wood that's being used for a building to make another building.

i think that's partly because of the lift mechanic: you're spending precious lifting power on having that building, so might aswell use that building.

it's a weird, restrictive way of city management, but i dealt with it by building only one of every ressource building (except water condenser), and after a certain point in the game you really don't have problems with that.

[Gyger]

I feel that it is an intentional design choice. You have to think carefully of what to build when and not build a micromanaged ghost town that reassigns workers as needed. There was an exploit in Frostpunk where hunters that worked at night were expected to work on other jobs during the day as well.

There is even a visual cue as to why you cannot just turn the building off. Most of the buildings in this game have some form of small lifting devices on their underside, ones which do not use coal. So you cannot turn them off without incurring an additional lift penalty.

[fredtuna]

It is indeed an intentional design choice. We treat workers assigned to buildings as professionals permanently assigned to their jobs unless you destroy that building. Workers are more akin to resources permanently used to build those buildings.

[jerry797]

And that`s the reason for me to refund the game.

[gabgab01]

Originally posted by fredtuna:

It is indeed an intentional design choice. We treat workers assigned to buildings as professionals permanently assigned to their jobs unless you destroy that building. Workers are more akin to resources permanently used to build those buildings.

it's interesting that you went with THIS as a design choice. i can understand where you'Re coming from, but it is totally possible to simply destroy a building and then build a new building with the same workers somewhere else, so the "professionals" mindset doesn't really take hold here, as you can do that nilly-willy.

moreover, if you do not have the deconstruct research on max, players get punished for prioritizing jobs like this, making the game a tiny bit harder unless you chill at a spot with food and coal for a while to power through the research.

as it is right now, it's just the same "reallocation"-mechanic as in other games but with extra steps, and while your design choice takes away from micromanagement and makes the game a bit more accessible, it comes at a cost of the feeling of control for other players.

i respect you for trying something different, but in this case, the reason that so many city builders have this "reallocation" mechanic is not because of lore reasons or so, but because it is a deliberate design choice meant to give the player more freedom and control over their own city, as well as give the player an additional tool to overcome hurdles.

so you might want to talk about this feature a bit more in a criticizing fashion, reflect on what works, why it works, and what does not work and why it does not work.

as game designers, you craft an experience aimed towards the playerbase, and as such it is in your responsibility to think critically of every design choice you make.

i'm not saying you should change it, but just to keep stuff like this in mind for your next game, which i hope you're working on right now^^

personaly, my only point of critique is that there is not enough "game" for me, which is to say that i enjoyed the experience, but felt like i wanted more of the game, like getting a spoonful of your favourite soup and wishing you had a bowl.

which is meant to be a compliment.

[Indariel]

Originally posted by fredtuna:

It is indeed an intentional design choice. We treat workers assigned to buildings as professionals permanently assigned to their jobs unless you destroy that building. Workers are more akin to resources permanently used to build those buildings.

I agree with Gabgab01...it's interesting that you went with the "they are professionals" angle, and that's just fine, but IMO if you are going to go with that, than there should be some jobs where the workers can be reassigned and others where they can't. For instance, Academy workers are obviously trained scholars, and would be next to useless in any physically taxing job, so they can't be reassigned, but there is no reason why someone who mans, say, the oar, can't be taught how to make adobe. Add in a "productivity" mechanic, where if you assign a worker there that has never done the job before goes down for a bit (simulating them learning their new job and the reduction in output as the experienced ones teach it to them) and it would make sense. You could even add in a small "training/experience" list on each person that just keeps track of what jobs they have been trained at. If the whole basis of the Airborn Kingdom was supposed to be a city full of the "best people", it would make sense that eventually all of them would learn to be able to step into any job seamlessly. Maybe even add in an actual experience system for each person that slowly goes up the longer that they are at a specific job and the higher their experience with that job the higher the productivity of that particular building. One of the biggest complaints that I have seen about the game is that is it just so short and that the last half goes by incredibly fast (I beat the game in just under 10 hours, and the last 2 kingdoms I did in just about 2 hours total.). Adding something like that would stretch the game out longer as people would try to get all their people trained in all the jobs. Another thing I would suggest is making having the wonders built as a condition of "winning", because for the "reward" you are offered at the end, just getting people to talk again seems a bit.....easy...especially since for the most part you just buy them off.

Just a few things to think about....

[Oddible]

Originally posted by jerry797:

And that`s the reason for me to refund the game.

Same. The game was fun but if these kinds of design choices will persist as I progress in the game I have plenty of other games to play. Player more easily reassigned than in-game worker.

[Weaver]

I'd say from my experience it certainly isn't a significant issue. Most production places you only need 1 or 2 of and as long as you keep moving and collecting resources and people, you are never in short supply of either.

[JD Wolf]

Oh, you can collect people? I have 8 assigned and 1 idle to do all my collecting... but I can't complete my first quest because I need 2. I'll have to either scour the planet for one more person to join us, or, better yet, scrap the Kiln, complete the quest, and rebuild the kiln. This will free these "professionals" to do something else and then put them back into the Kiln... which makes no sense given the reasoning stated by the developer. I mean, these guys were out collecting yesterday but, now that there's a kiln they no longer know how?

[Lord Aeducan]

Originally posted by fredtuna:

It is indeed an intentional design choice. We treat workers assigned to buildings as professionals permanently assigned to their jobs unless you destroy that building. Workers are more akin to resources permanently used to build those buildings.

lol if you gonna imitate Frostpunk at least do it properly.

[iluve2read247]

None of this makes sense! I get it but here's the real question how come a job that says 2 required has 3-5 people? I can't even get the overage back? Because like JD Wolf said you get 9 people to start and with 3 in the kiln (with no darn clay) and 5 in the research building (with no research) I can see having those people in their respective roles when there is work to be done. In most games of this genre you can move people around as long as the required number of workers are left to tend to the job. Here you put 5 people out of 8 to work a 2 man job.