[2021] Farsight Beacon Broken?

Originally posted by Another_Alt_Account

Thank you for the response, I see you're incredibly active on the steam forum as well!

I was actually just playing the released version, found out about the beta (and the massive changes you've been making since)! Looking forward to what's next!

The room management windows are getting closer - I know balancing all the requested features of the audience with good UX is a real challenge, but with continued iteration during development you can succeed where Dwarf Fortress has faltered.

For this "Room Design, Inventory & Job Management" UX work you're on, I'd highly recommend referencing Songs of Syx: Copy/paste rooms, sections, or even jobs; colonist lists and filters; room assignments and job automation... you're on your way to the "pooled inventory" with your new storage function work!

Originally posted by Another_Alt_Account

I worked for years on a similarly UI/UX heavy pixel-style game - admittedly getting bogged down in UX was one of the hardest parts of that project, but the most evidently beneficial. Don't feel obligated to respond to this unsolicited advice, but I know how hard indie dev can be, and hope some of it will help your journey!

This post got HUGE, apologies for the monolith of text! Hopefully something in here is useful for you.

I say this whenever I get the opportunity: In colony builders, "Quality of Life" is directly proportional to "Quality of Game". The core gameplay loop is "build your colony" which means the UX for doing so must be as fluid as possible for your player's to achieve a state of flow.

When you're pushing to allow depths of micro-management controls like you are here, a key principle to follow is "Working By Default". Ideally, a player can plop a room and no longer worry, assuming all the default settings will allow the room to function as expected.

Quick low-hanging-fruits: 

• when setting "threshold rules" for a recipe, the first listed should be "items in world", as this is probably the normal rule colony genre players are expecting. (bug: "items in world" tooltip uses the same tooltip as jobs; "Min Active Jobs for Queue - etc")
• Addendum: Wouldn't be surprised if players are using the "threshold jobs" rule without realizing it's jobs, not items. Minimum jobs is a bit of an odd rule anyway, since it's really just a "perpetual" job? if they finish all the jobs, it adds more jobs, so regardless of values it's just "keep doing this job" (Just saw the post from 2 weeks ago about this, saying it would be dealt with in "the next patch". I see how it could be useful for that specific "replanting a farm" mentioned in the thread, but I think my "perpetual job" below would handle replanting with clearer UX)
• Next option for threshold rules could be "Items in Storage".
• Both of these rules should DEFAULT to focusing on the recipe's item - No need to make the player search through a (partially alphabetized) list of everything, when 99% of the use cases will be to check the same item that recipe is crafting.
• Add shift-filtering to this item list (and all lists, really).
• Make Prop requirements for a room into a two-column list, using more of your horizontal space and freeing up needed vertical menu space.
• Change the red "missing prop" number to yellow if the prop is planned - a small tweak to help people quickly see if they are just waiting for things to be built or if they forgot to plan something.
• Save last used recipe settings, in player settings (global, not colony specific). When the player adds a recipe use these default rules/values. I'm betting the vast majority of your players want to set recipes to the same thing they usually do, and it's easy to tweak if desired. Would significantly reduce room setup time.
• If a job/item threshold is set and the "auto-queue" is still 0, set it to the threshold value the player just entered. This is likely your most common use case (if I don't have this stuff, make this stuff), and reduces room setup time.
• On the "function" vertical pane, add a "tab" on the top for each function, with that icon. Auto-select the right tab when scrolling, or click it to jump straight to that function. Helps with long function/recipe lists.
• when placing rooms, "ctrl" should toggle building a new room, otherwise placing a new room will also only place the borders (the other default ctrl hotkey)
• Double-click a room name in a UI goes to that room's x/y/z
• Not as low-hanging: You have a menu that shows all the jobs in a list to the right. Allow the player to drag these jobs around, explicitly setting an override priority. This could dramatically reduce priority/planning micromanagement as players could set-and-forget things they want done first, like firepits, beds, anvils, etc. This would be a much easier UI to make sure your settlers build a bronze cauldron before spending it all on bronze tools, for example.

To give an example User Story of some idealized UX flow,

Placing a well room:

I place the wellroom, and the room automatically gets a "Default Stockpile" to hold produced water, and a default "Fill Storage" job to fill the well-rooms containers with water.

The player will still want to decide where props go, of course, so our well is throwing an error that it still needs a well.

When I hover over the room, I see the room's tooltip warning "Room missing props: well". I double-click the room on the map, and (if cursor not intercepted by entity selection or etc) it automatically opens the room management window, with that specific room selected. I see in the management window the warning about the missing prop:well. When I double-click on that warning, it opens the build menu with the well selected.

Ideally, opening the build menu from such a "hotlink" would open a "shift filter" that lists all options. e.g. requiring an anvil would show all the options; bronze, iron, etc). With your new menu system this wouldn't necessitate closing room management, making it possible to "work on a room" through your menu to make sure you got it all set up, instead of hunting through the build menu and double-checking.

I place the well in the room. Once the well is finished, the room is active. The default jobs on the room are running, and I can tweak it however I like! Once all the props are placed, the room will just "Work By Default".

Default Stockpiles

Most rooms should get a default "stockpile" for just the things that room can produce, to be edited/micromanaged by the player as they wish (e.g. a well gets a default stockpile for "water"). It's a good default for workshops to store things they make in the containers they required in the room, fits player expectations. I'd think these should start with "place items on floors" disabled by default, to encourage players to use storage, only opting to store on floors for specific use cases/emergencies.

"Fill Storage" Jobs

The "Fill Storage" rule would run the specific job until they fill the room's storage. If there are multiple "fill storage" jobs, it should cycle through them in a loop (instead of just doing the first one until full). This could dramatically reduce micromanagement of job orders, with players just adding/removing storage as desired instead of digging into micromanaging orders.

Bonus: You could add back the 1 barrel requirement for the wellroom. It's not "necessary" since it could "fill storage" by placing water buckets on the floor, but as this is one of the first rooms a player will build, it would guide them to understand how to best use storage props, stockpile functions, and the "Fill Storage" jobs.

Stockpile Caps

"Fill Storage" jobs work best if you can also set caps in your stockpiles. This would allow a player to just have their workshops all "fill storage", and just worry about setting a stockpile limit in their warehouse to keep them from overfilling. For example, all my wells could be "fill storage" which fills the room. My warehouse default stockpile collects everything, so haulers will empty the wells to the warehouse until the warehouse is full. I can remove water from the warehouse stockpile entirely (depending only on storage in the well rooms), or set a CAP for water (e.g. 100 buckets), allowing me to collect a nice reserve (in addition to the well room storage), while leaving space for other goods.

"Perpetual" Jobs

In addition to the "Fill Storage" rule, "perpetual" jobs (i.e. when available) would help with specific rooms, like Farms and Cookhouses. These would be added when they can be executed: The farms would harvest/plant if there are harvestable/unplanted crops in the farm area (e.g. player-designated fields grow to maturity, or were harvested and left a blueprint to be replanted). The cookhouse would butcher when edible remains are available on the map.

These jobs don't make sense for a player to set a fixed number, since it would be constantly changing as crops grow and animals die/are butchered. It also means the player doesn't have to just set a bunch of jobs preemptively - if you can cut this across the board, the player's active job list will actually be useful since it's not full of "whenever it's available" jobs the player plopped down.

"Station" Jobs

"Station" jobs could help with visibility and keeping the "work" settlers do in the same place. Good for things like barracks, storage "dedicated haulers", home activity... I imagine these would actually be "hardcoded" jobs at the top of that job list, training/hauling/resting as available/needed. the job cannot be deleted, but the "delete" button instead toggles the job; e.g. homes would list 2 jobs, for "rest" and "procreate". disabling "procreate" still allows the settlers to sleep there, but that specific household won't reproduce.

"Shift" Filter

your "shift" search filter is awesome, a huge help with long item lists, but it's hard to tell when or how it can be used. This may be because the "first impression" of it is searching for colonists when nothing's selected on the main screen, but this (last I tried) only searched for the first letter typed; e.g. "shift + O" pulled up my "Oya" settler, but I couldn't type an additional "N" to find my settler "Onassis".

Add this to every list/dropdown you can! would be a lifesaver in picking items for the production rule. Instead of requiring shift be held down, make it a toggle state that highlights the bar and (if possible) shades other windows except whatever list is being filtered. If shift filter can be used, have it light up - if it can't work with the active menu, leave it grayed out.