07-08-2017, 11:46 PM
Hello again! I checked in on version .27, and was delighted to see you incorporated changes based on my earlier feedback about paths. I find the new system a lot more intuitive. Lots of other improvements too!
Since it seemed helpful last time I weighed in, I had a few other suggestions I wanted to throw out there, most of them intended to streamline zoning (which is already improved from the .25 version).
First, it would be great if you could select different size swatches, so you can paint larger or smaller areas. That'd be especially helpful for larger stations.
Secondly, when designing a station, it would be cool if you could copy/paste a component. (Maybe you already can, and I just didn't figure out how.)
Lastly, if you could copy and paste zoning between stations with livable habitats of the same size, that would be cool. I think it's possible the reason you don't already have that possibility is because right now, that's most of the task of building a new colony... Right now, if you copied and pasted all zoning, you'd be pretty much done.
But I want to compare this idea to how you can copy/paste station designs themselves. You can save and load designs. But you can't just take a LEO station design and use it in HEO out of the box. You can keep its structure and spin rate, but you have to change shielding, power, and heat sinks. You keep about 80% of it, and tweak the other 20% to fit the circumstances. It feels less like starting over from scratch, and more like refining something. Building on what came before.
Maybe you should be able to copy a zoning map to a new station, but stations in different orbits have different needs... Like ones further from Earth need more agricultural zoning, for example, due to the difficulty of resupplying food and oxygen. Or ones in the asteroid belt have a special zone for refining metals. Or whatever your research suggests might be an economic need in a particular region. If zoning can be copied, but 20% of it has to be tactically customized to the circumstances and role of the station, then you'd get the same "I'm building something new!" feeling without the "Oh man, I gotta start over from scratch..." feeling.
P.S. - and this is a really small thing that would be probably rather difficult to make happen - but it would be super cool if the police drones obeyed the Coriolis effect. I assume they don't yet, because their flight paths don't look weird. Coriolis usually make stuff look really weird! Disclaimer - I have only had a few emergencies, so I can't be sure you haven't already implemented something similar to my suggestion below, but the drones I saw flying flew mostly along the outside of the cylinder.
The quickest path in a rotating cylinder is rarely going to be a "straight" line along the surface of the cylinder, as that's similar to taking the outside track. They'd fly "up" really high and then "down" again, in what appear to be dramatic parabolic arcs (but are actually straight lines). They would also rarely want to fly along the rotation of the station. Rather, they'd fly against it, even if it looks "closer" to go the other way. Sometimes, they'd fly "straight" "up" to get where they're going, at least in a cylinder. I have no idea how difficult this would be, but it would be super cool if possible to implement, and if your physics are implemented correctly, I'm sure you'd discover further counterintuitive shortest paths to an emergency (or flaws in my own assumptions above).
Love the direction the game is going! Will definitely keep checking out new updates, and might add to this thread if I think of anything else.
Since it seemed helpful last time I weighed in, I had a few other suggestions I wanted to throw out there, most of them intended to streamline zoning (which is already improved from the .25 version).
First, it would be great if you could select different size swatches, so you can paint larger or smaller areas. That'd be especially helpful for larger stations.
Secondly, when designing a station, it would be cool if you could copy/paste a component. (Maybe you already can, and I just didn't figure out how.)
Lastly, if you could copy and paste zoning between stations with livable habitats of the same size, that would be cool. I think it's possible the reason you don't already have that possibility is because right now, that's most of the task of building a new colony... Right now, if you copied and pasted all zoning, you'd be pretty much done.
But I want to compare this idea to how you can copy/paste station designs themselves. You can save and load designs. But you can't just take a LEO station design and use it in HEO out of the box. You can keep its structure and spin rate, but you have to change shielding, power, and heat sinks. You keep about 80% of it, and tweak the other 20% to fit the circumstances. It feels less like starting over from scratch, and more like refining something. Building on what came before.
Maybe you should be able to copy a zoning map to a new station, but stations in different orbits have different needs... Like ones further from Earth need more agricultural zoning, for example, due to the difficulty of resupplying food and oxygen. Or ones in the asteroid belt have a special zone for refining metals. Or whatever your research suggests might be an economic need in a particular region. If zoning can be copied, but 20% of it has to be tactically customized to the circumstances and role of the station, then you'd get the same "I'm building something new!" feeling without the "Oh man, I gotta start over from scratch..." feeling.
P.S. - and this is a really small thing that would be probably rather difficult to make happen - but it would be super cool if the police drones obeyed the Coriolis effect. I assume they don't yet, because their flight paths don't look weird. Coriolis usually make stuff look really weird! Disclaimer - I have only had a few emergencies, so I can't be sure you haven't already implemented something similar to my suggestion below, but the drones I saw flying flew mostly along the outside of the cylinder.
The quickest path in a rotating cylinder is rarely going to be a "straight" line along the surface of the cylinder, as that's similar to taking the outside track. They'd fly "up" really high and then "down" again, in what appear to be dramatic parabolic arcs (but are actually straight lines). They would also rarely want to fly along the rotation of the station. Rather, they'd fly against it, even if it looks "closer" to go the other way. Sometimes, they'd fly "straight" "up" to get where they're going, at least in a cylinder. I have no idea how difficult this would be, but it would be super cool if possible to implement, and if your physics are implemented correctly, I'm sure you'd discover further counterintuitive shortest paths to an emergency (or flaws in my own assumptions above).
Love the direction the game is going! Will definitely keep checking out new updates, and might add to this thread if I think of anything else.