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I can't say I expected to find Winterhome in a good situation, but uh, wow my hope cratered. I probably should have gone with Faith, in retrospect, but I slowly got my hope to a level where people aren't on the way to leaving. I figure Faith is probably better at Hope boosting. Also, super glad I built child shelters in retrospect!
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Dec 4, 2023 00:55
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Yes, faith is usually better than order if you're thinking purely in gameplay terms. Faith generally increases hope while order decreases discontent. Discontent though tends to be the result of short term crises and is usually a lot easier to deal with than hope collapsing, which happens over a longer period but is much harder to fix. This can be quite a problem if you're going order especially if you don't want to go full police state. Try out the winterhome scenario if you really want to see how bad it can get. That thing is brutal even on the normal difficulty. I think trying to do it on survivor mode would be torture.
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Dec 4, 2023 15:35
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ThomasPaine posted:Yes, faith is usually better than order if you're thinking purely in gameplay terms. Faith generally increases hope while order decreases discontent. Discontent though tends to be the result of short term crises and is usually a lot easier to deal with than hope collapsing, which happens over a longer period but is much harder to fix. This can be quite a problem if you're going order especially if you don't want to go full police state. Yeah I've never really had major discontent issues that I didn't create myself from spamming extended shifts and now that I've got automatons coming online that seems much less necessary. 24/7 steel production baby! And foremen making automatons better just seems funny to me. I think if i was on hard or had much fewer workers the productivity boosts Order seems like it brings might have more advantages, but as-is I've got a good labor force and have the production staff to crank out automatons while slowly upgrading my housing. That and soup+moonshine for everyone has basically solved my food and discontent issues. And some fighting. It's weird to me that fighting pits don't cause some injuries as a "lighter" version of dueling, which can cause deaths. I'm trying not to build the propaganda center if I can help it but right now I don't see any other ways to really raise Hope. Everyone is living under a guard post, I'm spamming Patrols on cooldown, and trying to build up as much food and coal storage as I can, but at most the Londoners gauge shows that nobody else is joining. I might have to bite the bullet and get that propaganda center unless there is another way. I haven't picked between cemeteries or snow pile disposal yet, mostly because I haven't had anyone except a scout team die, but a "minor" Hope boost from cemeteries doesn't seem like it'll be enough. Come on guys, you're living in a fully automated frozen luxury bunkhouse. That's pretty cool.
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Dec 4, 2023 16:08
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If you don't have masses of sick it's worth signing ceremonial burials tbh, it's a small hope boost but there's not much tradeoff.
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Dec 4, 2023 17:02
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Morning Gathering can be a useful way to get a bit of extra Hope. The Propaganda Centre is very useful though. Dealing with the Londoners takes some time and patience. If you can stabilize the situation and deal with the events in a positive way, they will eventually accept things.
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Dec 4, 2023 17:46
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ThomasPaine posted:If you don't have masses of sick it's worth signing ceremonial burials tbh, it's a small hope boost but there's not much tradeoff. If you already have a cemetery then yeah It's weird that you can't switch or do both a cemetery and a snow pit
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Dec 4, 2023 17:50
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Dumb question: I have several infirmaries, many of them empty, yet I still have patients sitting in my Care House. I thought the Care House was supposed to hold them until they can be treated in Infirmaries, so why are they there and how can I force them into my Infirmary to get better (and back to work)?
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Dec 10, 2023 16:44
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Ravenfood posted:Dumb question: I have several infirmaries, many of them empty, yet I still have patients sitting in my Care House. I thought the Care House was supposed to hold them until they can be treated in Infirmaries, so why are they there and how can I force them into my Infirmary to get better (and back to work)? If they have amputations then they’ll need Prosthetics before they can rejoin the general work force. Other than that, and assuming those Infirmaries are staffed, then sometimes it takes a day or so for the system to respond fully (for example they might get caught in a hunger loop or something). Check the status of the patients and see if they have any unmet needs. If you can’t think of anything, try closing the Care House and see what happens.
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Dec 10, 2023 17:24
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I think sometimes people just stay in care houses if there's room, maybe?
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Dec 10, 2023 17:38
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Yeah no idea they ended up eventually moving to the infirmary and getting care. I beat A New Home! gently caress, that was nerve-wracking even with something like 20 days of food and I ended up with a positive coal income even with all of my steam hubs and generator going all out. An industrialized base of 20 automatons staffing 2 fully upgraded coal thumpers and associated 8 gathering posts as well as one t2 and one t3 wall drill and two charcoal kilns can more than make up for the max draw on your resources. If i could have raised the power on the generator I easily could have at least two or three more tiers but as it was I was pulsing Overdrive to keep everyone going. I probably should have had another infirmary but nobody died during the storm! And I used most of the available space on the map.
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Dec 12, 2023 01:23
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Congrats! I’m glad you had fun. It’s a (polar) blast of a game. Try the other scenarios! The Seedling Arks is a particularly good one, if you’re already a fan of Automatons.
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Dec 12, 2023 01:35
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20 automatons is frankly insane for your first game but well done. It's well worth playing the other scenarios - A New Home is pretty much the tutorial. Seedling Arks and Refugees don't add any new mechanics, just act as different challenges to the base game, so are probably a good place to start. The rest mix up the formula to varying extents. A few thoughts to help you decide which to start with (spoilered in case you want to go in fully blind, but nothing major): Seedling arks: You start with only a handful of engineers and have to create an automated city with automatons while preventing the ark buildings from freezing. Complications happen. It's fun, especially if you already like automatons, and it's pretty satisfying developing your clockwork city that barely needs heat across 80% of it. The plot is pretty standard stuff but involves a neat choice and, if you're good enough, the opportunity to reject it. Probably the easiest scenario, though, imo. Refugees: You start with barely anyone and have to just about get things set up, then wave after wave of new arrivals puts insane pressure on your food, healthcare, and housing. Quite challenging especially the first time round. Plot is fun and will make you a Stalinist Fall of Winterhome: Lol, good luck. You saw what happened to Winterhome. You're in charge of it in the weeks leading up to that. You start after a riot that burned half the city down, leaving a bunch of it in ruins. Your predecessor was a clown who designed the city in the most rear end backward way. You're not making enough food to feed half your population, most of them are housed in unheated tents, and you have about one medical post. Things only get worse. Bleak plot, and by far the hardest scenario by a very large margin. Can be frustrating but definitely worth playing. I literally do not understand how this is even possible on survivor mode Last autumn: Completely different mechanics to the base game. It doesn't even get cold for like 75% of the scenario. You're building the generator to a strict deadline and dealing with health and safety issues/labour disputes! Way more fun than it sounds, especially if you abandon any effort to stay sane and fully explore the top end of the tree of laws. My only criticism was that certain events fire on set milestones and can require you to meet certain conditions to avoid disaster, which can feel unfair your first time round (though very easy to plan for on subsequent attempts). Probably my favourite scenario. Can be a little frustrating but the new mechanics are refreshing and the tone is just 10/10. On the edge: No generator for you. Interesting initial idea, being an outpost team, and it's fun trying to adapt to relying on braziers and heaters. Plot is very meh, imho, and doesn't really do anything interesting (seriously go watch the trailer for this when you're done and compare it to the actual game, lol). There are a few additional mechanics like supply lines and settlement diplomacy which are kinda cool but feel unnecessary, underdeveloped, and a bit tacked on. A little disappointing overall. ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 11:09 on Dec 12, 2023 |
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Dec 12, 2023 11:04
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ThomasPaine posted:20 automatons is frankly insane for your first game but well done.
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Dec 17, 2023 04:37
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On the edge has some weird proofreading errors and it doesn't have the same voice as the main game. Idk if anyone else has noticed or if I'm just fussy but I haven't come back to it after act 2
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Dec 17, 2023 05:41
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I failed the Arks because my system was doing fine, but I didn't have a big enough stockpile of coal, so when new whatsit asked for it, my ark ended up unheated for just a minute.
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Dec 17, 2023 06:15
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Beating Winterhome on Extreme Survivor is one of the toughest challenges I've ever done.
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Dec 17, 2023 06:30
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FalconImpala posted:On the edge has some weird proofreading errors and it doesn't have the same voice as the main game. Idk if anyone else has noticed or if I'm just fussy but I haven't come back to it after act 2
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Dec 17, 2023 06:38
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Here's another neat little optimization I just remembered: people working in medical facilities can't get sick. It's very useful in the early game because you can stick all your engineers in medical posts overnight and not have to worry about losing research efficiency during the day. It also means that you don't have to heat medical facilities beyond the minimum to keep them operating, because the patients won't get sicker as long as they're being treated.
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Dec 17, 2023 07:38
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Fister Roboto posted:Beating Winterhome on Extreme Survivor is one of the toughest challenges I've ever done. Jesus. I can't imagine. I just failed to save New London in On the Edge on hard, mostly because I think I took too long trying to get a new food source and a ton of my people starved early on which got me behind. I never really was able to stockpile any food, either, probably because of that earlier miss. It's an interesting idea that just feels a little underbaked.
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Dec 17, 2023 10:25
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Ravenfood posted:Jesus. I can't imagine. I just failed to save New London in On the Edge on hard, mostly because I think I took too long trying to get a new food source and a ton of my people starved early on which got me behind. I never really was able to stockpile any food, either, probably because of that earlier miss. Yeah, even on lower difficulties you want to beeline food for On the Edge. I like it a lot more than the rest of this thread seems to, but I have a lot of forgiveness for jank so long as it's ambitious jank.
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Dec 20, 2023 22:50
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Acute Grill posted:Yeah, even on lower difficulties you want to beeline food for On the Edge. This absolutely describes how I feel about most games. I re-did it and it was fairly easy to get all the settlements loyal and two out of three fully upgraded on a repeat (on hard) though I did still have a few people starve before enough food came through. The biggest thing was just the foreknowledge that New London is going to gently caress you and better ability to manipulate the laws. The first time through I worked hard enough to make the quota that I didn't get extended shifts until I broke free from them and I had no steel/cores/workers compared to the prior. It's a bit of a shame how important that advance knowledge (and avoiding accidentally grabbing other survivors early) is to long terms success. Other times in this game I don't feel like there are major "traps".
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Dec 21, 2023 02:03
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ThomasPaine posted:Try out the winterhome scenario if you really want to see how bad it can get. That thing is brutal even on the normal difficulty. I think trying to do it on survivor mode would be torture.
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Dec 21, 2023 02:54
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Decided to revisit Last Autum to pick up the last couple of achievements that I didn't already have. It's pretty good! I wound up only needing 1 workshop to research the entire tech tree, with 24h shifts
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Jan 2, 2024 23:05
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Last Autumn was so much fun.
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Jan 2, 2024 23:51
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Yeah, 24 hour shifts are great in Last Autumn, especially when you realize that you can just turn them off during the day and back on at night to basically get free labor. (don't actually do this it's tedious as hell)
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Jan 3, 2024 08:40
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Alright just did back-to-back runs trying to wind up with 0 engineers at the end and then trying to wind up with 0 workers at the end (e.g. all engineers and convicts). Honestly the pro-worker run was way easier, you wind up being able to use workers in all jobs and workers are an extremely important resource from the beginning anyway, with engineers not being able to even work most jobs. At the beginning you really only need engineers for infirmaries and workshops, and when it comes to workshops you really only need 1 in The Last Autumn... so I didn't order any engineers at all, I just made do with the handful that I started with. Ordered tons of workers and steam cores though and that worked great. And to the surprise of no one, even when workers are striking they're pretty happy to end the strike in exchange for a few extra rations, and between fishing and foraging rations are plentiful. Getting the achievement was a little tricky, I basically had to turn off my infirmaries and send the engineers to go shovel coal in freezing conditions in order to wind up with a pure and beautiful all-worker colony. The cooldown buttons this path gives are very good and I was able to keep people at max efficiency into the late game thanks to them. The engineers+convicts run sucked. I thought convicts were supposed to be workers that need to be watched, but no - they also can't do any construction or destruction jobs. So you still need workers around until you're ready to end the run and grab the achievement. At a 4:1 rate of convicts to engineers I was still getting warned by the game that I didn't have enough guards, which means that importing convicts+engineers is strictly less efficient than simply importing more workers. The cooldown buttons are only okay; being able to convert 5 workers into engineers is pretty nice, the overseer button is strong while it lasts but you have to basically keep pressing it on cooldown and it doesn't come with a net gain - this sort of thing should be a passive ability that you turn on or off rather than something that you have to keep pressing. My efficiency dropped a lot as I converted workers into convicts, discontent was low but but then it was low in the all-workers run anyway so it seems like I didn't gain anything by doing this. Overall, I'd say RISE UP WORKERS, THROW OFF YOUR MASTER'S YOKE AND STAND TALL, STAND TOGETHER
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Jan 3, 2024 09:44
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QuarkJets posted:Overall, I'd say RISE UP WORKERS, THROW OFF YOUR MASTER'S YOKE AND STAND TALL, STAND TOGETHER
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Jan 3, 2024 15:34
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Remalle posted:Ok but what do you think about the game Oh yeah, game's pretty good too The only achievement I'm missing is the one for completing the generator in Endless mode before winter comes. Sounds straightforward
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Jan 3, 2024 18:04
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I'm almost 100% sure that the communist utopia route being 10x easier than the fash penal colony one was very deliberate on the part of the devs lol
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Jan 3, 2024 19:15
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I wouldn't even call it communist or a utopia, it's clear that you're still a Boss who is at odds with the union. It felt like they wanted to emphasize safety, which reduces productivity in just a few workplaces, but that can make them happy enough for an even bigger and global productivity bonus. They may have been trying to do a Snobs vs Slobs thing but it just doesn't work out well because most of the important jobs can't accept engineers; maybe it'd be better if Convicts showed up earlier in the decisions
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Jan 3, 2024 21:50
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double-post
QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 08:04 on Jan 4, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 21:51
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My last locked achievement was "build the generator before the weather changes in endless mode" - I had never done the Builder scenario in endless mode. I decided to combine this with The Rifts, my favorite Endless map. The achievement description is kind of misleading, I thought you'd start out in a temperate climate like The Last Autumn but everything is already frozen, the temperatures are only a little higher to make it possible to get by without the generator for awhile. It went pretty great! Since it takes several weeks to build the generator I had to rely on insulation and workplace heaters to get through the first couple of storms, there's not a whole lot you can do to prevent freezing conditions but just lasting 1 day of that isn't the end of the world. The storms also reset any generator progress, so you've got to time your progress to make headway. The "weather changes" means that at day 40 the game takes off the kid gloves and treats this endless run like any other in terms of temperature, regardless of whether you have a generator. My generator had a funny bug - I turned it on, and the level 1 range went out to the normal distance, but the game doesn't allow building anything within that area. Steam hubs still worked though
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Jan 4, 2024 08:24
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i think that area is used for various "infrastructure" props while you're building the generator, but then once it's done it doesn't get reclaimed, which feels like an oversight IIRC, it's been years at this point. it was definitely my fav "scenario" tho because you need to rush insulation to get through the early weeks so it's quite different from the others
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Jan 4, 2024 11:59
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QuarkJets posted:I wouldn't even call it communist or a utopia, it's clear that you're still a Boss who is at odds with the union. It felt like they wanted to emphasize safety, which reduces productivity in just a few workplaces, but that can make them happy enough for an even bigger and global productivity bonus. Yeah I guess, though I was a little miffed when the ending slides said I 'manipulated' to succeed. No I didn't, I was fully on board with the worker revolution. Also a bit nitpicky because, you know, I want the game to happen, but once the red terror is in full swing you wonder how you, as the overseer, don't end up in front of a firing squad. You can put engineers in unskilled jobs iirc with one of the labour laws - I think it was abolition of privileges, the same one that lets you put workers in normally engineer only ones. It's kinda funny but generally not worth doing from a pure gameplay perspective because your engineers are generally better at the jobs they're used to and it's silly to waste those skills. It's nice being able to have workers fully staff your workshops etc though, and I think there are a few beneficial events that can fire doing so. Keep your standard workers away from your healthcare though unless you're really desperate, because as I found out to my cost on my first playthrough having unskilled labourers responsible for doing surgeries can have some predictable consequences! QuarkJets posted:
Yeah, that's not a bug. You'd think you'd be able to reallocate the generator construction area to normal once it's completed, but you can't, so the innermost ring is always unusable. It seems silly so it's probably just an oversight they never bothered fixing. It's also pretty dumb that you don't get any of the construction specific laws in endless. It's virtually impossible to build the generator without all of the worksites being deathtraps, which is a fun challenge, but eh. ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 03:19 on Jan 5, 2024 |
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Jan 5, 2024 03:13
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Yeah but since you start off with Purpose unlocked you can get Shrines super early! That's pretty cool. Plus field kitchens help a lot with the cold. I figured we'd be able to build Braziers like in Last Autumn, but nope - the secret of a big bowl of burning coals hanging over the street has been lost to time One thing I hadn't considered going in is that automatons have to refuel at the generator, so you're kind of locked out of those until you finish it - I wound up not building any anyway, Endless mode gives you an abundance of labor as it is.
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Jan 5, 2024 06:11
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The demo for Frostpunk 2 is up! (if you preordered) I can't play it for another eight hours or so.
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Apr 16, 2024 00:48
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Played it for a couple hours It's very frostpunky, but they really did change a ton. Overall the scale is way bigger. Instead of struggling to get a shanty town up and running inside 30 days you're managing the progress of the civilisation that grew out of some random town from 1. So there's no day/night cycle — time ticks by one day at a time, not one minute. Your population is much bigger and more abstracted. You designate zones for common building types like housing and resource extraction rather than build one thing at a time. You have to play politics with multiple factions to pass laws democratically, so there's no way to just click your choice of law. In fact factions often demand you pass some slate of laws or research they favour in return for their cooperation on one law. The three-axis ideology system and parliamentary politics sim seem to touch every part of the game. Hard to judge how easy or important it will be to powergame them. I miss a lot of the micromanagement from 1, but unlike a lot of citybuilder sequels they didn't make it more 'accessible' or whatever, it seems like they just built a new game around what they see as the natural historical outgrowth from the events of 1. It's still very difficult. Maybe more difficult, even, but I can't tell the difference this early between high difficulty and me being bad Other notes: no obvious bugs or serious performance issues. loving gorgeous, too, of course. My citizens are starving picturesquely. Beautiful soundtrack again. 100% content with my preorder Cassian of Imola fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Apr 16, 2024 |
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Apr 16, 2024 01:16
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Cassian of Imola posted:Other notes: no obvious bugs or serious performance issues. loving gorgeous, too, of course. My citizens are starving picturesquely. Beautiful soundtrack again. 100% content with my preorder One thing of note is that laws can be repealed (and factions do occasionally push to repeal laws they don't agree with), but research options seem to be permanent once you've reached one of the mutually exclusive flavours of coal mine or w/e
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Apr 16, 2024 03:11
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Cassian of Imola posted:It's still very difficult. Maybe more difficult, even, but I can't tell the difference this early between high difficulty and me being bad Seconding this, going through the tutorial while being "proactive" and thought I was doing good Frostbreaking more materials, getting a good factory going, etc, then all of a sudden I'm out of food. Then I'm out of workers. Then I solve those it gets cold and oh no my coal ran out while I wasn't looking. The stress from the first game still shines through! I was worried about the politicking side of things but so far it's been interesting working with the factions. The negotiating mechanics to help get the votes you need for a law you want to pass feels more like me shaping my city without me knowing about it than strictly a mechanic or a setback. Votes can be bought in some cases with cash, but in other cases by making political promises to support that factions agenda by passing a law or letting them choose the next one to be voted on. So far I haven't yet hit a time where I wasn't able to follow through on a promise or felt like I was hamstringing myself in doing so, exited to see how that evolves. Also it's cool that the counselor's have their own mini-personality quirks. Not sure if this plays into voting or is just some character building, all I know is Estelle is a good sport: 
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Apr 16, 2024 03:46
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I'm really hopeful for the game, since I feel like the first game blazed some new trails for city games, and I feel like the newer features and focus touch on a lot of things that the genre is generally lacking. There's not been many takes on scaling up a city game so you don't place everything individually, and this looks like something weirder than the Sim City zoning approach. The implication of mechanical megaprojects you still manage are also full of potential. Politics are part of everything in real-world city building, but they're kind of absent in the game genre, with the main games that do try to address them being fairly anemic in how they effect a lot of the gameplay, so something that tries really hard to make it a major factor instead of minor flavor is going to be interesting at the least, whether or not it's fun.
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Apr 16, 2024 03:50
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