This is a list of features not in game that we (you) think should come in future updates. Please respect the theme and technology level that the game already represent.
You are encouraged to reply to this thread with your input. If you disagree with something on the list. Find that something on the list should be different or explained different. Please do tell. I try to only list desires with no objections.
If a feature is said by developers to be working like intended and the way it is working is against player desires. A greater evaluation will be done and will generally require a larger support from players to maintain it’s position in the list.
Basic
Healing plants optional for farmer and doctor, like crystals is for miner and scholar.
Ability to change the order of colonist portraits.
Wheel technology. Unlocks cartridge and mill (Flour).
Bucket, bucket of water. As decoration if no other use.
Ranged Weapon practice target dummy. (Bull’s Eye target board)
This thread is a list of feature requests by the community. Since we get a lot feedback I want to take a moment to dive into how we take lists like these into account when working on the next update:
Other than this forum, there are a lot of other places where feedback is given as well: The Discord Server, the ingame feedback box, the subreddit and so on. We can’t do everything, so how do we choose?
As developer we repeatedly go through 2 stages over and over again: Deciding what to implement and then working on implementing it. While we are implementing something, we just write down the feedback we get to be reviewed later.
When we are deciding what to implement, we look at all the community we’ve written down as well as threads like these. We also look at our own ideas and decide how much time we want to spend on new features, bug fixing, community requests, and so on. Finally we select a mix of different features and put them on our internal Trello board.
When it turns out we’re ahead of schedule, we add more tasks onto the board, otherwise we deprioritize features to get the update out in time.
Here is my view on the list. I have changed the headers, gave some feedback on your allready good ideas and add some ideas of my own. I don’t tend to watch to far forward just yet.
Needed now:
Healing plants should be optional for farmers and doctors, just like mining crystals is for miners and scholars.
Add a bell which is a rally point. When I ring the bell all coloninst run towards the bell for battle and or have their job changed to soldier.
Autosave
Optional friendly fire, since I don’t want it but Malhalla does
Keep season instant switch, it’s an iconic feature to the game, since most games do phasing.
Hotkey for name tags to appear/dissappear
Tooltip on traits in satisfaction skill point menu (where you spend points on colons traits).
Instead of changing colonist portrait order, it should get it’s own tab just like the building options. Although it looks and works great now, I don’t want my screen full with portraits once I reach 100 population.
Ideas for later:
Better line of sight mechanic for archers.
Tool weapon management.
Colonists prioritize the house where their bed stands when they want to sit for diner and other simple needs. (Now they wish for shelves, chairs in own home, but don’t use it themself).
Foresters taking care of sapplings, I don’t notice them doing so right now.
Soldier patrols or specified guarding positions.
Ideas for much later:
Give colonists a safe/unsafe feeling de-/buff for (not) having lights near. Gives torches a need.
Female colonist and love wishes, also gay love options to keep everybody happy.
Why optional fire now? Because it can make players quit the game if it stays in.
Why a bell? Because I think that is the most tiresome part to micromanage right now.
Why a hotkey for names? Because sometimes I’m unsure who to talk to, for completing a wish.
Why a tab for colonists? Better to add it on early in development, I guess I have no experience developing.
That is awesome. Well done! I want to reply to everything hehe. Your list is really good and could easily replace mine. Merging them together is definitely best though. It’s looking good
I will list your points with my reaction.
Healing plants
replaced.
Rally bell
anything to address this issue really
Friendly fire
haha. well, i been thinking about it for couple days now and was already regretting that i ever brought it up. removed.
Season switch
very good point. i agree. removed.
hotkey
and one to cycle through colonists (tab) added.
Colonist Tab
this is a really good idea. though i much like the portraits and they could scroll if more colonists come. i kind of expect both portraits and commands to already have scroll function. i find this is totally up to devs what they want, but in terms of priority scrolling is easy. would rather have more diversity in the portraits to better tell them apart. leaving this one for later.
Colonist Behavior
they need quite a few improvements to their ai in regard to furniture use. added.
Forester
quite sure the forester “tend” to the ground at times? there’s just no visual of the sapling at first i think. maybe sapling should pop up when animation is finished instead of like 5 min later. this need clarification.
Light buff
good idea, but complex execution. it should be easy to make a mood reaction to light and darkness. make it for inside house only. added.
Torch
i find this boils down to allowing colonist to carry light source. added.
Female love
il rather not have love and politics in the game
Extra tools, cloth and decoration
well. what tools, cloth and decorations? i have listed more than needed already, decorations though…
Upper Floors
i would like to hear devs comment on this one. its a real big one.
@Malhalla and @Weerwolfboy
Localization is not something we have direct control over. We don’t speak Chinese or Russian and can’t pay for localization, so it depends on having a motivated Chinese Or Russian player in the first place. We did make a lot of steps to make localization easy though.
Also, “improve colonist AI” is too general a statement to be really actionable. Actually, the AI is pretty sophisticated already. However, as long as it’s not fully automatic or fully manual, it becomes a balancing act of deciding if they should listen more closely to the player or have more free will. Maybe you can replace this point by a collection of situations where you feel the AI got in your way?
Upper floors: That may very well be the feature I personally wish for the most. But it also doesn’t do much for gameplay, so as long as we’re not funded, we’ll probably end up deprioritizing it…
Sorry about the language. I just put it there as I find it missing. removed.
The AI is difficult to pinpoint.
I have this idea with a marking tool, enter a edit mode and mark ownership on furniture and pathways so they use the road you want them to etc. Colored pathways. Kind of like a map overlay.
Could this be something?
The AI is very good, I agree. It just bugs me a little that they have all kinds of wishes for things they want in their house, but then go to their neighbors house, because he has the same stuff.
But it’s a minor detail, so I understand if you don’t prioritize it right away.
Only problem I have, which is still little, but can become a big problem with more colonists, maybe.
Sometimes a colon is blocking a doorway, which make another colon not being able to pass and do his work. Maybe it is an idea that colons notice when they are in somebody’s way and move aside?
Maybe the “wait” command could be made a permanent task? Right now I have the feeling that colons don’t want to wait long enough, so I use the “relax” command instead to keep them in place before a fight. Same for “remove all dead plants” command, I expect colons to keep removing dead plants until there are none left. Else I would simply press “remove dead plant” if I wanted only 1 to be removed.
As for upper floors. I added them to be “ideas for much later” since it is no major mechanic for the game. It’s more like a extra function for when the game is pretty much finished.
I want to come back on where I called the AI great. It is good.
It will be great if farmers prioritize harvesting over sowing and both harvesting and sowing over cooking and other tasks. This would be real helpfull to keep farmers efficient when left alone for a bit.
I see, thanks for the description @Weerwolfboy, we’ll do some priority tuning.
The “standing in way thing” is not easy. We can probably handle something like “standing in way of door”, but a general solution may take some time.
thanks @Lenoa! We’re working on a lot of stuff for the next update
That’s no problem. It’s not that big of a deal at the moment.
Maybe it is easier to have them prioritize to use the things they have in their own house, so they won’t be in each others way that much. I have noticed that they tend to prioritize the first item build, eg. I have 5 houses, with 5 food shelves. The colons only use the first build food shelve, which leads to 1 crowded house. This goes for chairs as well, only if the first chair is used allready they go search for another chair.
But like I said, it’s not a big deal as of yet and when it happens (only 3 times now, not counting my own mistake by placing furniture in a stupid way that they become stuck with ease) it’s easy to fix by moving the colons manually. + I could also ignore their wish for a food shelve in every house and just build a central eating house for them with enough room to move.
However, I also wanted to add I’m not particularly stoked about this style of list. That’s for 2 reasons:
This list of community requests should not be misunderstandable as a Todo list for us. Because it’s not a Todo list, but more of a collection of ideas of what we could or should add to our Todo list.
An update shouldn’t be judged by how many features it completes from these community lists, because there are going to be updates where we fulfill none of the features of some particular list.
But you guys can still be happy about it
Any community list is automatically inaccurate For example, for Alpha 7.4, the minor balance update alone, we fulfilled more requests than what’s on this list. These are of course smaller things, but still.
Just wanted to make sure no one uses these lists as a measuring stick in the future
For example, for Alpha 7.4, the minor balance update alone, we fulfilled more requests than what’s on this list. These are of course smaller things, but still.