12-23-2017, 07:04 AM
Wow, great feedback Athena! Here are some quick off-the-cuff responses, but I'm going to put deeper thought into most of your suggestions when I'm more awake, and see about tweaking/adding some things for the next release.
First, a space colony isn't like Apollo 1 — it's like Earth. It has flammable things (trees, grass, some parts of buildings) growing in a normal Nitrogen/Oxygen atmosphere. Stuff's going to catch on fire sometimes. You could argue that the buildings ought to be made out of entirely nonflammable stuff, but that's harder than it sounds; look at California... almost anything is flammable when the flames get hot enough. Similarly, this isn't a space station staffed by government employees; it's a town with thousands of ordinary citizens, some of which are going to occasionally try to get away with something illegal.
But police and fire stations do affect the frequency of crime and fires. And responding (calling them to the scene) is really important to keep them from spreading, particularly in the case of fires. It's possible though that the frequency of these events is still too high; we'll look at tweaking it for the next release.
As for XP, these depend not just on population, but on other things too. Is 10,000 residents the only Opportunity in your opportunities list? It could be that we need to add more (and you have some good ideas for those above).
You're probably right about being able to build colonies bigger than 1 km radius in real life... that limit in High Frontier is mostly to keep the game performing acceptably. Speaking of which, yes, it's normal that games consume far more CPU power than other apps, requiring laptops to be plugged in most of the time.
Thanks for all your thoughts — keep 'em coming! (And feel free to open a new thread on any of those topics you want to explore in more depth.)
First, a space colony isn't like Apollo 1 — it's like Earth. It has flammable things (trees, grass, some parts of buildings) growing in a normal Nitrogen/Oxygen atmosphere. Stuff's going to catch on fire sometimes. You could argue that the buildings ought to be made out of entirely nonflammable stuff, but that's harder than it sounds; look at California... almost anything is flammable when the flames get hot enough. Similarly, this isn't a space station staffed by government employees; it's a town with thousands of ordinary citizens, some of which are going to occasionally try to get away with something illegal.
But police and fire stations do affect the frequency of crime and fires. And responding (calling them to the scene) is really important to keep them from spreading, particularly in the case of fires. It's possible though that the frequency of these events is still too high; we'll look at tweaking it for the next release.
As for XP, these depend not just on population, but on other things too. Is 10,000 residents the only Opportunity in your opportunities list? It could be that we need to add more (and you have some good ideas for those above).
You're probably right about being able to build colonies bigger than 1 km radius in real life... that limit in High Frontier is mostly to keep the game performing acceptably. Speaking of which, yes, it's normal that games consume far more CPU power than other apps, requiring laptops to be plugged in most of the time.
Thanks for all your thoughts — keep 'em coming! (And feel free to open a new thread on any of those topics you want to explore in more depth.)
Joe Strout
Lead Developer, High Frontier
