more small scale events, like crashed cargo pods
Agreed. One of the things I've struggled with from a design perspective is getting the frequency of events to feel right.
We actually have ship wrecks now, and they can be kinda' interesting. There are certain rare items that can only be salvaged from ship wrecks, but sometimes the wrecks contain corpses that are infected with horrible diseases. Right now, I don't allow this event to occur during a colony's first season (approximately the first hour of a game), because I've found that during that time, I'm not really equipped to respond to such an event anyway. I'm struggling to build simple infrastructure to satisfy my colonists' most basic needs. If one of them contracted corpse rot at that point, it'd immediately destroy the expedition.
Many events can't happen at all until several more hours into a colony's playtime. Again, it's because if the Old Corsair shows up 15 minutes after landing, he's just going to massacre everyone and leave. So, I'm not sure how to best address this from a design perspective. There are so many requirements that need to be satisfied to keep your colonists happy, and these require so much infrastructure. The depth of the human data model sorta' demands it, so from square one, you've got to establish all these things (and more):
-Power Grid
-Shelter
-Sleeping Area
-Socialization Area
-Water Treatment Facilities
-Construction Material Manufacturing Station
-Consumer Goods Manufacturing Station
-Some kind of mining operation to supply at a minimum some kind of metal and some kind of metalloid.
-DataNet Terminals, and you need these fast!
-Probably a chemical power generator and a mined fuel source
-Child Care Area, and fast! Sometimes colonists hit it off and are reproducing 20 minutes into a game.
-Fabric synthesis infrastructure for lamps and clothing.
-Lamps! And fast, too!
-Farming and food processing infrastructure. You'll run out of food and drink soon enough.
The list goes on and on, and the start of a game is something of a race to establish these things before your colonists start flipping out for want of them. And the reason you need all these is because humans need food, drink, shelter (and they're picky about this, so it needs lighting, bedding, etc), creative outlets for media production / consumption, clothing, an appropriate area to hang out with one another, an appropriate area for kids, and so on.
Because I'm swamped with these tasks as a player, I delay the introduction of events sometimes for a pretty long time. But sometimes, this can make the pace of a game feel a bit sluggish. My thought is that righteous graphics will make all this building feel more satisfying, which will help alleviate some of the pacing issues, but I need to put more thought into making the game *feel* right. If you guys have any suggestions, I'd be all ears.
theres room for small improvements that make big impacts
I agree once more. There are a bunch of little improvements that ought to help the system as a whole.
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Topic: Outer Colony (Read 66297 times)