I don’t know where you are going with this, so, the following may be completely off beam. My apologies if it is. So far, I am very impressed with what you have achieved.
However, every time I play this I find myself wondering why the production orders are with the worker and not the production facility. It can be quite frustrating chasing after a worker to check their orders and change them if necessary.
It seem to me it would be far more logical and playable if the player could simply go to the production site and view/change orders. In addition, having the orders attached to the worker is going to complicate matters if/when you want to add personality and/or relationship attributes to the characters. Currently the workers seem to be more characterless robots than villagers.
You are totally on the right track @Wai. Especially since with Alpha 4, you’re going to have multiple workers per plot, so it only makes sense to configure it through the plot.
Only thing I don’t know yet is if we can change the interface to be plot-based in time for Alpha 4 or not.
Oh, and the reason it’s currently on the villager is that I want to show what the villager is currently doing and why.
So you can see that for example it’s not doing crafting wood planks anymore because the stockpiles and the inventory is already full.
Final solution will probably have the configuration plot-wide, while the explanations and status icons are still per-villager if you want to check what they are doing.
Many thanks for your quick reply. How long before we get Alpha 4? I am looking forward to see how this develops. I can see the problem with the possibility of idle workers. I have noticed in many games there is a simple counter on the interface showing numbers of ideal and active workers. Lots of examples out there but the one which comes quickly to mind is Timberborn. This does require the player to go looking for the source of the problem though. Hmm… Those little Founders of yours seem to be programmed to wonder off as soon as you leave them alone and take a nap under a tree!
