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[Asgarus]

If I may suggest, allow floors to also act as roofing for the floor below?  That would make things much more simplistic, plus... it makes sense for multifloor buildings.  Not so much when you have a multifloor building, where each floor has an arbitrary double layer of building material between them. ... awesome for vermin I guess? 
You essentially build both out of the same amount of materials anyways.

I don't use roofs anymore. Floors work just as well.Otherwise you couldn't do multi storage buildings, and I have those in my colony.^^
Underground you should just have to dig out a room and place a door at the entrance. That should be a proper room (as long as you don't have holes in the ceiling/ground).

Also, do I need to use the room autobuild option to make custom buildings register?  Or am I able to individually build and designate rooms/buildings on my own?  My limited experience in using the autobuild option, putting in the numbers for dimensions, it just doesn't match.

Never used autobuild. As long as the room as no holes in the floor/ceiling/walls you can designate it as a private/communal room.

I get huge lag when designating a large chunk of area for logging / plant gathering, it even does the hickup when I do around a 7x7 area.  Also happened when I set up an agricultural zone for my Agricultural Bureaucrat...

I get that, too. Not sure why.

(I've stopped playing for now, considering how frustrating it is to manage peasants.  It is worse then doing it in DF... plus the underground city issues.)

Yeah, colonist management definitely needs to be worked on.

edit:
I've just tried to assign rooms underground. It works perfectly fine for me. Even rooms with multiple Z levels are created correctly.
   83       82       81
DDDDD DDXDD DDDDD D = Dirt
DDDDD DAAAD DDDDD A = Air
DDDDD DAAAD DDDDD X = Door
DDDDD DAAAD DDDDD
DDDDD DDDDD DDDDD

Works totally fine.


I can't place light structures underground though.


edit again:

Also, do I need to use the room autobuild option to make custom buildings register?  Or am I able to individually build and designate rooms/buildings on my own?  My limited experience in using the autobuild option, putting in the numbers for dimensions, it just doesn't match.

I just tested autobuilding. Seems to work fine, too. The dimensions you enter are the inner dimensions without walls. So if you want a 3x3 room, you need a 5x5 area. 3 for the room, 1 for the walls and 1 for the stairs outside.

[Paxiecrunchle]

I appreciate the emergent-ish nature of the AI in this game, from what I've heard, is there anything they really cannot do at the moment?

[( Tchey )]

It seems many of you are playing OC like Dwarf Fortress (tower-dungeon-like), while i feel i'm playing it more like RimWorld (village-like). I did dug mines, but i even didn't try to build underground. I thought about doing it, but as i have premade stuctures, it "feels more right" to build outside and consider the underground only for resources gathering.

I like to see different approaches on the same game from different players, it's always interesting.

[Asgarus]

Well, sometimes I build proper buildings outside in DF, too. Most of the time not though
But I also play OC more as a village builder with big, multiple storage buildings and streets and stuff. Only digging down to mine resources.

edit: not using premade structures, though. Designing all buildings by hand.

[VoyagerGames]

Good questions about how floors / roofs work. The way it's supposed to work, at present, is to have a layer of floor tile in between each story in a multi-story building. Then, the roof is supposed to be covered in roof tiles. The game does some analysis, and colonists should like a building much less if it isn't capped with a proper roof, at its very top Z level. Stairs are also allowed at the top Z-level, to facilitate roof access.

(I've stopped playing for now, considering how frustrating it is to manage peasants.  It is worse then doing it in DF... plus the underground city issues.)

I read you loud and clear, man, and this is an issue that's been brought to the forefront by Asgarus and OC forum user Torvus. Asgarus started a thread on the OC forums a while back about basically this topic, and I'm curious about what the best tools / mechanisms are for managing large numbers of dwarfs in DF. Is there anything I can look at for inspiration? I'm envisioning a user interface that shows a searchable / sortable list of all the colonists, plus information about their stats, skills, primary jobs, etc, but if you guys have a tool / plugin for DF that you recommend highly, I'd like to check it out, for ideas.

It seems many of you are playing OC like Dwarf Fortress (tower-dungeon-like), while i feel i'm playing it more like RimWorld (village-like). I did dug mines, but i even didn't try to build underground. I thought about doing it, but as i have premade stuctures, it "feels more right" to build outside and consider the underground only for resources gathering.

I love seeing the different approaches people are taking here, too! This, too, isn't stated anywhere, but humans dislike living underground in Outer Colony. It harms their creativity and happiness if they're forced to do so for extended periods of time.

Everyone posting in this thread has been a tremendous resource for identifying ways to improve the game. It's always really exciting for me to see someone post feedback or suggest an area for improvement, and I think that every time one of these changes is made, the game gets a little bit more playable and fun. I like the idea of light structures underground in particular. There is an actual advantage to this, as temperatures are stable and comfortable underground. Right now, buildings aren't drawing power for HVAC, but when they do, a fully subterranean settlement would use less energy than its above-ground counterpart.

As a quick weekend update, I'm going to try to work on the duplicate name issues today, and I'm going to work more on identifying an isometric pixel artist to start remaking all the graphics. The sooner I find our new artist, the sooner that the longest and most expensive process can get underway, so it's my top priority for now. This is going to be a really busy week at work, but I'll keep you guys posted on progress as I get close to cutting another release.

[VoyagerGames]

Oops, I am sorry for the double-post. I was trying to edit the last one, but I messed up.

I appreciate the emergent-ish nature of the AI in this game, from what I've heard, is there anything they really cannot do at the moment?

Thanks for the kind words, man! Also, as for what colonists can't do, they definitely struggle hard with certain classes of problems. In some areas, the numbers that I'm using to weigh actions and goals get out of whack, leading to strange behaviors. Most importantly, though, the colonists lack a coherent model for common sense, so they sometimes end up engaging in plainly stupid actions as they try calculating their way to optimal solutions.

This article is from 2016, but it describes an early problem I had with getting the NPCs to behave properly. It's a little bit funny, but it gives some insight into the kinds of problems they can run into.

https://voyagergames.com/i-love-tfr-bugs/

[Madman198237]

Hey, VoyagerGames!

Sorry, you missed my last post and I need a good sci-fi game.

I've had some issues with downloading it, suffering an error that says something about it being unable to install java.exe.

[( Tchey )]

I'm curious about what the best tools / mechanisms are for managing large numbers of dwarfs in DF. Is there anything I can look at for inspiration? I'm envisioning a user interface that shows a searchable / sortable list of all the colonists, plus information about their stats, skills, primary jobs, etc, but if you guys have a tool / plugin for DF that you recommend highly, I'd like to check it out, for ideas.

Dwarf Therapist "of course" :

[VoyagerGames]

Sorry, you missed my last post and I need a good sci-fi game.

I've had some issues with downloading it, suffering an error that says something about it being unable to install java.exe.

Haha, oh no! I'm a spas, sorry I missed your post. I'm trying to do everything on time blocks now that I'm so low on free time, so I'm limited to scanning this thread a bit in order to fit in time for bug fixing and ironing my work shirts.

It sounds like the auto-updater may have gotten itself into a weird state that I've never encountered before. I know this is pretty terrible, but the only advice I can think to give is to try un-installing completely, then downloading it once more, and installing it again from scratch. That may work, but if it does not, I'll see what else I can think of to try to get it working for you again.

Thanks, as always, for your patience!

And Dwarf Threapist looks amazing...that, right there, is what Outer Colony needs. Thanks, Tchey!

[MrWiggles]

So can you buy this game, or is it just the demo?

[Vivalas]

The demo appears to be the latest version, with an exception. Unsure what the final payment model will be, but anyways this game looks neat!

That exception, is that the demo link on the front page links to 0.5.50, while the newest version is 0.5.51. You can get around this by just copying the link address of the demo button, and changing "50" to "51".

Anyways, is it possible for colonists to rebel, get in fights, or otherwise be ruffians? I like the idea of trying to run a tyrannical dystopian colony and indoctrinating everyone to be aggressive and loyal warriors. I'm wondered if justice is currently like DF, where you want to prefer weak sheriffs since strong ones tend to give overzealous beatings and kill your dwarfs, and because dwarfs don't fight back or resist arrest. Do colonists fight back here and otherwise try to cause trouble for various reasons? Like murdering the third member of your love triangle since you really want that girl, etc, or resisting arrest?

[MrWiggles]

Thank you.

[dennislp3]

And Dwarf Threapist looks amazing...that, right there, is what Outer Colony needs. Thanks, Tchey!

It is indeed amazing. Even popping in a stripped down version to handle only jobs and saving bells and whistles for later would be a major improvement in OC when it comes to managing people.

[Zangi]

While we are talking about UI upgrades....  that event log. 
It needs a filter.   I don't really care that Colonist #5 went to sleep.... for the umpteenth time during the same leisure shift.  Seriously, they usually have nothing better to do and their sleep time is like 5 seconds. 

I know some players have gotten much farther then me... is that 4 line event log a whirlwind or what?  Already bad enough for me after buying another set of peasants and they also procreated.

[Asgarus]

While we are talking about UI upgrades....  that event log. 
It needs a filter.   I don't really care that Colonist #5 went to sleep.... for the umpteenth time during the same leisure shift.  Seriously, they usually have nothing better to do and their sleep time is like 5 seconds. 

I know some players have gotten much farther then me... is that 4 line event log a whirlwind or what?  Already bad enough for me after buying another set of peasants and they also procreated.

Most of the time it isn't of any help if I want to check it after noticing something weird because it only goes back so far.
It would be nice to have a more detailed event log in an extra window like the request window.
You could have a table that shows different detailed information like

Event	Description	Coordinates
Furniture manufactured	Bob successfully manufactured a bed using Furniture Manufacturing Station	10;20;70
Someone died	Kenny just died from old age	13;15;70
Someone died	Kenny just died from a wound caused by Bill	40;50;70
Manufacturing completed	Bob successfully completed the manufacturing of 10 beds.	10;20;70

While names and coordinates can be clicked to jump to the person/position.

Of course with proper filters.