Need to take away specialists ability to collect within your colony

[hockeybrianboy]

It seems way too easy to just use your specialists to clear all the resources around your colony even if you start with scarce resources; it's literally impossible to not have like 100 food, planks, concrete within like 10 minutes of starting the game using your first 3 specialists. Back when specialists couldn't do this (I believe all they could do around the colony was kill the hostile creatures), I would actually worry about being able to get the colony going; particularly food if you don't get a body of water to fish. I think this ability needs to be removed.

 

[Honeywell]

I agree that specialists working around camp make the game easier. Having them gather far out materials is faster and safer, pausing a building and letting them bring the materials to the build site is a huge time saver and in a pinch your colony is never going to starve if you have specialists around who can bring home berries and venison quickly and efficiently.

They make the game more interesting because they're another resource you have to use to their best advantage--they're not free labor. There's a cost involved because everyday you have your specialists in camp is a day wasted exploring the map.

In the hard, scarce resource start the challenge of that was always getting the gate open as quickly as possible to access the world map. To open the gate you have to get your metal and plastic production up and running and that I've found takes the same amount of time as before. Right now today, even with specialists working in camp, it takes me 3-5 days to open the gate with low starting resources. I looked back on my old let's play from last year and it still took me the same amount of time to open the gate back then without specialist help.

It's a tough call--I always want a game like this to be more challenging because coming up with a winning strategy is the fun part for me--but I like the liveliness and personality having the specialists working around the colony brings. They're fun.

 

[Ps2nic]

That, and their ability to accelerate construction times nominally is fun to exploit.

 

[Khuden]

I strongly disagree.

Early game they're a godsend and speed up the most tedious part of the game, beginning when you have too few colonists to spare for gathering tasks. Mid-game they're vital for quick catastrophe response (Grabbing berries to deal with a sudden food shortage is literally life-or-death for colonists). And late game it's an entirely moot point.

Besides, all the stuff they can get is non-renewable so it's really not a huge deal. They cannot support the colony by themselves, they can only give a boost - and even then only if you forego their most valuable contribution which is the world map.

 

[Ps2nic]

@Khuden what are your thoughts on the accelerated building exploit?

I think I really need to come up with a name for it...

 

[Khuden]

@Khuden what are your thoughts on the accelerated building exploit?

I think I really need to come up with a name for it...

I'm not familiar with the exploit. Unless you mean 'assigning a specialist to a building speeds up the build time', which I don't think is an exploit really? It's just giving them utility. Even then it's mostly just a minor boost.

Keep in mind that early game you cannot plan ahead for catastrophes. When you've got only a handful of survivors, your colony is living on the edge of a knife. If something happens to shut down your food production, people start to starve. If a heat wave hits and you don't have enough wells, your colonists WILL suffer. Specialists are the ones we turn to for help in those times. When there's a pandemic and all your trappers are in the medical tent, it's your specialists who go hunting deer to keep the people fed. When there's a heat wave popping up and you've only got 5 concrete available, they're the ones who rush out to stockpile more as fast as possible and get that well built ASAP.

Specialists are one of the big key components that make this game more interesting and different than other city-builders (Postapocalyptic or not), and I don't feel that taking away their utility really improves the game at all.

 

[Ps2nic]

I'm not familiar with the exploit. Unless you mean 'assigning a specialist to a building speeds up the build time', which I don't think is an exploit really? It's just giving them utility. Even then it's mostly just a minor boost.

@Khuden minor boost it may be, but I call it an exploit because the effect stacks.

 

[Khuden]

If it's an a gameplay mechanic that the developers intended, it's not an exploit. If it's intentional that we are allowed to do that then it's just a natural part of the game.

 

[Ps2nic]

My thought process was, the Specialists Building mechanic you use to build the colony from scratch at the start intended for you to have them take the first step. Later on, when the Colonists arrive, this mechanic changes.

Before, you can just plunk down any of the (not greyed out) buildings, but you need to manually assign a Specialist to deal with it. After, Colonists, usually Carriers, gather the materials from storage and then begin construction. With just one guy (mayyyyyybe 2) and whichever tools they happen to have in their inventory. You can assign Specialists at any time during the gathering and construction phase, and they will either assist with gathering resources, wander around until all resources have been squared away (accounting for material in transit), or get to work on construction of the building.

The reason I think it is an exploit is, the devs probably intended for Colonists to take over building construction (after the player tells them where to build of course) when they finally show up - which gets better with better tools, but the Specialists building mechanic remains. Combining the sole Builder and a Specialists accelerates the process nominally, and stacks the more Specialists you add.

I should note exploits often involve intended mechanics. One famous exploit is found in many Mario games - jump on the same koopa shell a specific way, and you can max out your lives. All from the mechanics of koopa shells.

The Specialist Building mechanic can be abused because you could probably build a well in seconds with 1 builder and 10 specialists. And wells take a long time to build.

But we can agree to disagree.

 

[Joanna_ifs]

Hey all!

Really good discussion on the topic and really this is what makes designing games so difficult - some people like some features, others don't. Please do keep up the discussion though, we read through all of these and take them into consideration when making changes to the game. We know that there is absolutely no way for us to please all, but at least this way we can try our best to come up with a solution that at least works for most people

So thanks again for the feedback and even more importantly, thanks for playing!

 

[matti_ifs]

@Khuden what are your thoughts on the accelerated building exploit?

Developers would like to know your location.

But seriously, it's not an exploit but rather a minor min-max trick you can do to speed things up. The effect to the overall balance isn't huge, but giving players the option to REALLY boost a critical building's build time is something we feel you should have.

 

[Archiver_2k4]

like matti_ifs says its an OPTION if you dont like it, dont use it.