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[thvaz]

For the first time since I got the game and it looks like a proper game and not just a test build, but I think there was quite some since I last tried it.

Played just the sandbox mode, and there is no much variation in what to do in the beginning - you must set up a workshop table, secure an energy source and install some heaters ASAP or in 10 minutes your colonists will start to drop like flies.

Some systems are still obscure - I think I didn't got how the rooms should be laid down. I feel dug up caves are not safe for the colonists, but there is no way to tell.

[Sensei]

So I took a shot at playing again recently. It seems more like a game than last time, and colonists do things instead of getting stuck and standing around.

However, unfortunately colonists are still a bit baffling in what they choose to do. I've had a lot of issues with colonists starving to death even with several planters totally full of vegetables, they just won't harvest food. I did build a food processor- do they refuse to eat raw carrots if they can be cooked? I also have lots of issues with colonists dying of fatigue, even though I have beds going un-used. Do they claim beds and refuse to share?

I also noticed that when I've expanded a room and want a door disassembled, they'll never disassemble the door. I feel like disassembling should be a higher priority, or maybe IMPs should be able to do it.

[simoroth]

Good to hear the last build was better.

Spent this month working on the colonist need balancing so they should be much better with everything now. Specifically with small balance issues like with food or disassembly. 0.66 came out yesterday. The number of bug fixes were just insane: https://blog.maiagame.com/maia-0-66-caves-of-steel/

Looks like people are having fun with it now. I've noticed the number of players playing greater than 10 hours is starting to creep up. I'll have to start poking people to update their reviews more.

[simoroth]

Do they claim beds and refuse to share?

In the latest update you can assign them beds via the middle click menu. Otherwise they will share.

[Sensei]

I played the first two scenarios today. My impressions:

Bugs:
-First, it's odd that I don't have to complete mission objectives. I never met requirements like having a certain amount of food stored or research, but the timer ran out which constitutes "mission success". Not sure if this is actually a bug but it's odd.
-Colonists refusing to harvest food is still a problem. Based on today and previous experiences, it seems like, whatever causes it, happens during gameplay and then stays that way permanently. Colonists will harvest for a while and at some point they ALL stop, indefinitely. I haven't tried avoiding making a food processor so I don't know if that's related. It made it totally impossible to meet mission objectives about having food, even with several planters of full potatoes. I noticed it happened around 75,000 calories stored. Maybe that's a coincidence or maybe some trigger reduces the priority of harvesting and it never gets set back properly?
-Once I experienced three colonists standing inside each other in front of a smelter and doing nothing, but at least marking the smelter for removal caused them to stop and do something else.
-I've also seen colonists standing around doing nothing in Hydroponics, or sitting down. Maybe this is just behavior related to them enjoying the plants in there though.
-I had one guy die of fatigue when I had empty beds, which is less than before. This still seems patently absurd though. I feel like they should just fall unconscious and either require medical attention, or just sleep for a while and be unhappy about it. At the very least, surely if they're about to die of fatigue they should stop working and rush for a bed, British work ethic isn't that high right?

General stuff:
-Most of the productivity of my workers seems to be bottle-necked by building materials. I find it necessary to have three or four smelters and even then they spend more time smelting than building. I think it might be a logical balance choice to have smelters produce more building materials each run and/or work faster.
-It's still frustratingly difficult to tell what my workers are doing, and why. If my base is dysfunctional, the cause can be hard to diagnose. I really wish I could mouse over someone and see their current task, like "Going to Workshop to use Smelter" or "Going to Research to build Computer", "Going to Living Quarters use Bed" etc. Also I don't know if it's too "hands on" but I'd like to be able to allow/disallow colonists from certain tasks, kind of like you can now allow or disallow them to use objects. Like, I could toggle on or off whether someone can build, harvest, research, etc.
-Every game seems to reach a point where I have a number of tasks queued up for colonists, and nothing to do but wait for them to do it. Like... for half an hour or more. It's difficult to tell if my colonists are just doing nothing, or why they're doing nothing, but there inevitably comes a point when I desperately need a two doors, three heaters, medical equipment, a windmill and a power storage and no matter how many colonists I have, I'm just waiting. My only influence upon the game is to add more tasks, but the highest priority stuff is already assigned. This is kind of fundamental to the game so I don't necessarily know how to fix it, but during gameplay I often felt like I was waiting with absolutely nothing to do. It's possible that this is just symptomatic of bad/buggy worker priorities or the large amount of time it takes to make building materials, but I think that game-ending bugs aside (like everybody not harvesting food and starving with days worth of food hanging on trees right next to them) this is the biggest issue right now.

[simoroth]

Thanks for the feedback.

Some of the missions are time based so I end them whether you achieved the targets or not. Specifically the ones with the hard narrative. I think I may remove that from all but the Twilight zone mission as this comes up a lot.

Food prep priority is based on a stored food to colonists ratio. It starts at 0.65 priority (pretty high) then drops to .56 (important but not a big deal) at 10k each, then when there is 24k for each colonist it goes down to 0.4. I have been going back and forth on this a lot this update. The current recipe works in a normal game, but does make those missions where you need to create food slightly harder. You can double/middle click ration packs to prioritise their creation too.

The colonists hanging out in the hydroponics are likely to just be resting as you said.

Dying from fatigue is super rare now. Especially since they can get a little rest from sitting on the floor, and even when eating at the dining table. It usually only happens after really long surface walks when someone was already massively tired when they started. Was it someone who had been on one?

Smelters produce more as the game goes on. You'll notice colonists getting skills in construction and if they use the smelter they produce two material bundles instead of one.

Colonists show what they are planning on doing by carrying things in their left hand. So a spanner for a build job or repair, food packets for storage or food prep, hammer for room building, research data etc. I will be adding more of these next. (The manifest also mentions their planned locations.)

One of the main issues I see with the priority system is people placing loads of stuff. Atmosphere gens in every room, heaters in every room, 60 plant pots on their first hydroponics set up. I'll be adding ways to gently dissuade them from doing this because it can make the game really boring and also makes the build system far too slow. In the instance of hydroponics I am adding a cultivator that produces seedlings at a set rate, so you can make a huge farm, but without players spamming stuff in the early game.

[simoroth]

Put a build up on Steam to tweak a few of the needs to solve the issue with the food.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/252250/discussions/0/3377008022023989584/

From the save files I got it's mostly from people building multiple storage setups that drive the need for building materials higher than food production. I've added a bit of fuzzyness to that which might split it a bit evenly.

Also made disassembling landers drop 3 materials instead of one. Giving a better incentive to destroy them and a way to solve materials shortages quickly.

[Sensei]

If Geothermal vents are on interior tiles and surrounded by interior tiles, they can be built without requiring being near an air lock.

Thanks for this.

EDIT: Sometimes they put on suits anyway and walk all the way from the front airlock. This has resulted in one fatality so far from fatigue.
EDIT2: This may have been caused by my mining out a single tile which was exposed to the outside atmosphere, though I didn't realize it (it was in the middle of a tunnel a few tiles from the outdoors). However, I still eventually suffered a colony collapse due to starvation with tons of food available as usual. I did observe colonists harvest plants a couple times, but ultimately not nearly enough, and only ever one at a time though I had several planters. I also had the cap of 40 chickens, and they never slaughtered one. On a less serious note the temperature in the base was approaching 35 to 40C everywhere and the hottest room was livestock containment, so I think my chickens were overheating the whole base. I uploaded a save file here if you're curious.

[simoroth]

If Geothermal vents are on interior tiles and surrounded by interior tiles, they can be built without requiring being near an air lock.

Thanks for this.

EDIT: Sometimes they put on suits anyway and walk all the way from the front airlock. This has resulted in one fatality so far from fatigue.
EDIT2: This may have been caused by my mining out a single tile which was exposed to the outside atmosphere, though I didn't realize it (it was in the middle of a tunnel a few tiles from the outdoors). However, I still eventually suffered a colony collapse due to starvation with tons of food available as usual. I did observe colonists harvest plants a couple times, but ultimately not nearly enough, and only ever one at a time though I had several planters. I also had the cap of 40 chickens, and they never slaughtered one. On a less serious note the temperature in the base was approaching 35 to 40C everywhere and the hottest room was livestock containment, so I think my chickens were overheating the whole base. I uploaded a save file here if you're curious.

Thanks I'll check it out.

Sometimes they put on suits even if it is inside because those tiles put out a lot of toxic air. On my livestream today I had a colonist walk over a vent accidental and die a pretty awful death as noone would go near to rescue her.

[simoroth]

Big update out today. Lots of features but also a lot of polish going into the game now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb7sM-HgOaA&feature=youtu.be

Update Notes: https://blog.maiagame.com/maia-0-67-the-polisher/

[Majestic7]

More bots, yay. Have to take it for a spin soon.

[forsaken1111]

Looks like this is coming along really nicely. I boot it up again every time I see an update, will check this out tonight

[simoroth]

More bots, yay. Have to take it for a spin soon.

Next update I will be adding the much needed fire fighting robot. And since we'll have that I'll probably make a whole bunch more items flammable.

[Empty]

More bots, yay. Have to take it for a spin soon.

Next update I will be adding the much needed fire fighting robot. And since we'll have that I'll probably make a whole bunch more items flammable.

Including the fire fighting robot hopefully?

[MrWiggles]

Ah yes. We made the fire fighting robot out of coffee creamer, balsa wood, rice paper, and loosely packed saw dust.