1. Are we sure that Meteor threat is calibrated correctly?
I'm playing on a map with 3/4 Meteor threat (other threats as well), and I'm often subject to massive bombardments, losing plenty of drones and getting my Rovers crippled, and my Pipes destroyed. Either there's a calibration error, a bug, and 3/4 Meteor threat occurs more often and does more damage than intended, or else the mechanic is WAD and if so then 4/4 is going to be truly horrible.
2. What's the point of a Drone Assembler factory?
You spend 1 Electronics to build 1 Drone prefab, but 1 Electronics can be purchased for 100M$ from Earth, whereas you can purchase Drone prefabs each for 30M$ from Earth, or purchase a Drone Hub for 150M$ which comes with 4 Drones included (or 6 if you're sneaky, like me, and don't build them until you've researched the Drone Swarm Tech), bringing the cost-per-Drone down to 37.5M$ (or - and this is my point - 25M$ with Drone Swarm). I know that later you can get BioRobots, but I'm not sure if that's a Breakthrough, and even then, my question is, why would I ever build a Drone Assembler before I can make BioRobots?
3. In general, the prefab/build-your-own balance is annoying.
I tend to go by the rule of thumb to always buy prefabs, because they're cheaper than building from imported ingredients (at least in most cases; I haven't "mathed" every single prefab) even if you regard Concrete and Metal as costing zero. What's the design intent, here? I really don't like that there are a dozen or so instances of two ways of doing X, and one way is cheaper than the other, and the only mitigating factor for the expensive way is that it's a bit faster, and the "but this way is cheaper" is not transparent.
In many cases, I sit there inventing Techs that enable me to build something I can already get as prefabs, and the only reason I bother to invent those Techs is that they unlock further Techs. If I could skip them entirely, I would happily do so.
I understand that there may be Events that make Earth-Mars traffic (or trade) impossible for a long period of time, and possibly plans for some kind of Martian Independence thing (or maybe that's already implemented), but that then counts as a departure from normal gameplay, and the overly expensive options should probably not be available except during such situations.
4. I can eventually build Electronics out of Rare Metals. But what's the ratio? 1 Rare Metal becomes 1 Electronics? Or what? 2:1? 1:2? An inquiring mind wants to know.
5. Why are Passages so fiddly?
I worried endlessly that I won't be able to make the connected Dome clusters I want. Then I realized that it was actually easy enough, and I figured I had finally "broken the code", but then in my current game I got screwed over again because the 3rd Medium dome in my dome triangle was just 1 or 2 hexes too far from one of the others so I couldn't get all 3 interconnected. The root of the problem is that you have to finish building both Domes before you can "test" if you can connect or not. I can try counting hexes, but even that is error-prone (besides, it hardly fels like 2018 game gameplay). It'd be nice if I could blueprint both Domes, then "test" with a Passage to see if it greens me or reds me, then cancel the Passage and cancel the secondary Dome, or just pause its construction before it gets started.
6. Can we plz have some more low-tier Medium sized (3 hx) builings?
Especially now where you have to sacrifice a large (10hx) triangle site to make a Passage, but the game still has very few worthwhile 3hx buildings. I'd especially love a crappy Quality Tropico-style Bunkhouse that I can cram colonists into.
7. While I'm at it, the only thing 1-tier sites can be used for are Decorations.
Or, okay, Sterling Generators. How about a few "functional" buildings that occupy 1 hx? Not doing much, but providing some nifty service, just at low quality is not able to serve more than 1-2 colonist at a time.
8. "Colonists are departing."
Yeah, but what if some of those are Tourists? I'd really like a separate notification for "Tourists are embarking". Instead of the game telling me "11 colonists are departing" and scaring the Martian shit out of me, because I worry that my colony is doing badly, the game ought to say "2 colonists are departing" and then separately announce "9 tourists are embarking" indicating that the tourist dudes/gals are returning home but that those are nothing to panic about, only the 2 that weren't supposed to travel home.
9. I'd like some Tropico-style coloured overlays.
With such red/yellow/green overlays, I'll be able to see all sorts of things about my buildings, including construction completion (although compared to Tropico 1, 3 and 4, it actually works very, very well, without the often endless Caribbean waits), whether the building is producing at full blast or partially producing or not producing at all. Maintenance interval left. We know the devs have the technology.
I'd also like to be able to see a coloured overlay for people working in buildings, so that I can see exactly how stressed out my night shift Polymer Factory workers actually are.
10. Hawkings vs Research Labs?
The Hawking Institute requires 8 people per shift, vs 3 per shift for the Research Lab, but on a per-building basis it produces only twice as much science, so about 75% science per Scientist.
Also what happened to the penalty for having 2 or more Research Labs, 2 or more Hawkings, 2 or more Tech Spires? I can't remember what it's called, but it's still present in Exploration Rovers, where the first gives you 100 Science, the next only 80, the next again 60, etc.
I get the impression that Hawking Institutes were meant as a way to bypass this redundancy penalty so that rather than having 3 Research Labs with the 3rd being gimped hard by the penalty, you'd have 2 Research Labs, one slightly gimped, and then you'd build one ungimped Hawking, and then later again you'd build one slightly gimped Hawking.
With this stacking penalty seemingly gone, what's the thinking behind the current balance, as per Sagan? I can't see it. Is there any thinking?
11. Why don't Subsurface Heaters use more Water if you increase the area? It seems weird that even for a huge area it's still only 1 Water used, only the Power usage going up.
12. Why is Water/Oxygen usage based on how many Domes you have and their sizes? It really ought to be based on buildings that people live in, with each Living Quarters and Apartment, and Arcology (and that 3hx Bunkhouse that I want) requiring daily H2O and O2. That way, it'll be based more closely on how many colonists you actually have, with the Dome itself requiring very, very little of each. I realize this is going to get into decimal amounts of fluids, but the game already has decimals for Wind Turbines which require 0.5 Machine Parts per maintenance cycle, so it's not an actual problem, and if implemented the game will scale much better as you can build life support gradually based on your number of colonists, rather than having to build in huge chunks based on the number of Domes.
13. There's a mod in the Workshop that adds a button to "disable maintenance", meaning that the building will continue to run until it stops due to wear and tear, and then it won't get maintenance. It'd be super neat if this was added to the vanilla game.
14. There's a Tech that makes Farms increase the Comfort of Domes they're in, but how much? And does it stack if you have multiple Farms? If it stacks, does it stack linearly, or are there diminishing returns?
15. Some buildings, such as the Sanatorium, have to be Spires.
What's up with that? What's the game design thinking behind such a mechanic? I like the romance of Domes with Spires, don't get me wrong, that's fine, but limiting each Dome to one Spire (with a few exceptions that can have none or two) is a kind of opportunity cost thinking that goes against immersion.
... More to come later, I'm sure.
I'm playing on a map with 3/4 Meteor threat (other threats as well), and I'm often subject to massive bombardments, losing plenty of drones and getting my Rovers crippled, and my Pipes destroyed. Either there's a calibration error, a bug, and 3/4 Meteor threat occurs more often and does more damage than intended, or else the mechanic is WAD and if so then 4/4 is going to be truly horrible.
2. What's the point of a Drone Assembler factory?
You spend 1 Electronics to build 1 Drone prefab, but 1 Electronics can be purchased for 100M$ from Earth, whereas you can purchase Drone prefabs each for 30M$ from Earth, or purchase a Drone Hub for 150M$ which comes with 4 Drones included (or 6 if you're sneaky, like me, and don't build them until you've researched the Drone Swarm Tech), bringing the cost-per-Drone down to 37.5M$ (or - and this is my point - 25M$ with Drone Swarm). I know that later you can get BioRobots, but I'm not sure if that's a Breakthrough, and even then, my question is, why would I ever build a Drone Assembler before I can make BioRobots?
3. In general, the prefab/build-your-own balance is annoying.
I tend to go by the rule of thumb to always buy prefabs, because they're cheaper than building from imported ingredients (at least in most cases; I haven't "mathed" every single prefab) even if you regard Concrete and Metal as costing zero. What's the design intent, here? I really don't like that there are a dozen or so instances of two ways of doing X, and one way is cheaper than the other, and the only mitigating factor for the expensive way is that it's a bit faster, and the "but this way is cheaper" is not transparent.
In many cases, I sit there inventing Techs that enable me to build something I can already get as prefabs, and the only reason I bother to invent those Techs is that they unlock further Techs. If I could skip them entirely, I would happily do so.
I understand that there may be Events that make Earth-Mars traffic (or trade) impossible for a long period of time, and possibly plans for some kind of Martian Independence thing (or maybe that's already implemented), but that then counts as a departure from normal gameplay, and the overly expensive options should probably not be available except during such situations.
4. I can eventually build Electronics out of Rare Metals. But what's the ratio? 1 Rare Metal becomes 1 Electronics? Or what? 2:1? 1:2? An inquiring mind wants to know.
5. Why are Passages so fiddly?
I worried endlessly that I won't be able to make the connected Dome clusters I want. Then I realized that it was actually easy enough, and I figured I had finally "broken the code", but then in my current game I got screwed over again because the 3rd Medium dome in my dome triangle was just 1 or 2 hexes too far from one of the others so I couldn't get all 3 interconnected. The root of the problem is that you have to finish building both Domes before you can "test" if you can connect or not. I can try counting hexes, but even that is error-prone (besides, it hardly fels like 2018 game gameplay). It'd be nice if I could blueprint both Domes, then "test" with a Passage to see if it greens me or reds me, then cancel the Passage and cancel the secondary Dome, or just pause its construction before it gets started.
6. Can we plz have some more low-tier Medium sized (3 hx) builings?
Especially now where you have to sacrifice a large (10hx) triangle site to make a Passage, but the game still has very few worthwhile 3hx buildings. I'd especially love a crappy Quality Tropico-style Bunkhouse that I can cram colonists into.
7. While I'm at it, the only thing 1-tier sites can be used for are Decorations.
Or, okay, Sterling Generators. How about a few "functional" buildings that occupy 1 hx? Not doing much, but providing some nifty service, just at low quality is not able to serve more than 1-2 colonist at a time.
8. "Colonists are departing."
Yeah, but what if some of those are Tourists? I'd really like a separate notification for "Tourists are embarking". Instead of the game telling me "11 colonists are departing" and scaring the Martian shit out of me, because I worry that my colony is doing badly, the game ought to say "2 colonists are departing" and then separately announce "9 tourists are embarking" indicating that the tourist dudes/gals are returning home but that those are nothing to panic about, only the 2 that weren't supposed to travel home.
9. I'd like some Tropico-style coloured overlays.
With such red/yellow/green overlays, I'll be able to see all sorts of things about my buildings, including construction completion (although compared to Tropico 1, 3 and 4, it actually works very, very well, without the often endless Caribbean waits), whether the building is producing at full blast or partially producing or not producing at all. Maintenance interval left. We know the devs have the technology.
I'd also like to be able to see a coloured overlay for people working in buildings, so that I can see exactly how stressed out my night shift Polymer Factory workers actually are.
10. Hawkings vs Research Labs?
The Hawking Institute requires 8 people per shift, vs 3 per shift for the Research Lab, but on a per-building basis it produces only twice as much science, so about 75% science per Scientist.
Also what happened to the penalty for having 2 or more Research Labs, 2 or more Hawkings, 2 or more Tech Spires? I can't remember what it's called, but it's still present in Exploration Rovers, where the first gives you 100 Science, the next only 80, the next again 60, etc.
I get the impression that Hawking Institutes were meant as a way to bypass this redundancy penalty so that rather than having 3 Research Labs with the 3rd being gimped hard by the penalty, you'd have 2 Research Labs, one slightly gimped, and then you'd build one ungimped Hawking, and then later again you'd build one slightly gimped Hawking.
With this stacking penalty seemingly gone, what's the thinking behind the current balance, as per Sagan? I can't see it. Is there any thinking?
11. Why don't Subsurface Heaters use more Water if you increase the area? It seems weird that even for a huge area it's still only 1 Water used, only the Power usage going up.
12. Why is Water/Oxygen usage based on how many Domes you have and their sizes? It really ought to be based on buildings that people live in, with each Living Quarters and Apartment, and Arcology (and that 3hx Bunkhouse that I want) requiring daily H2O and O2. That way, it'll be based more closely on how many colonists you actually have, with the Dome itself requiring very, very little of each. I realize this is going to get into decimal amounts of fluids, but the game already has decimals for Wind Turbines which require 0.5 Machine Parts per maintenance cycle, so it's not an actual problem, and if implemented the game will scale much better as you can build life support gradually based on your number of colonists, rather than having to build in huge chunks based on the number of Domes.
13. There's a mod in the Workshop that adds a button to "disable maintenance", meaning that the building will continue to run until it stops due to wear and tear, and then it won't get maintenance. It'd be super neat if this was added to the vanilla game.
14. There's a Tech that makes Farms increase the Comfort of Domes they're in, but how much? And does it stack if you have multiple Farms? If it stacks, does it stack linearly, or are there diminishing returns?
15. Some buildings, such as the Sanatorium, have to be Spires.
What's up with that? What's the game design thinking behind such a mechanic? I like the romance of Domes with Spires, don't get me wrong, that's fine, but limiting each Dome to one Spire (with a few exceptions that can have none or two) is a kind of opportunity cost thinking that goes against immersion.
... More to come later, I'm sure.
Meteors, are the most "friendly" of all.
