Good questions about how floors / roofs work. The way it's supposed to work, at present, is to have a layer of floor tile in between each story in a multi-story building. Then, the roof is supposed to be covered in roof tiles. The game does some analysis, and colonists should like a building much less if it isn't capped with a proper roof, at its very top Z level. Stairs are also allowed at the top Z-level, to facilitate roof access.
(I've stopped playing for now, considering how frustrating it is to manage peasants. It is worse then doing it in DF... plus the underground city issues.)
I read you loud and clear, man, and this is an issue that's been brought to the forefront by Asgarus and OC forum user Torvus. Asgarus started a thread on the OC forums a while back about basically this topic, and I'm curious about what the best tools / mechanisms are for managing large numbers of dwarfs in DF. Is there anything I can look at for inspiration? I'm envisioning a user interface that shows a searchable / sortable list of all the colonists, plus information about their stats, skills, primary jobs, etc, but if you guys have a tool / plugin for DF that you recommend highly, I'd like to check it out, for ideas.
It seems many of you are playing OC like Dwarf Fortress (tower-dungeon-like), while i feel i'm playing it more like RimWorld (village-like). I did dug mines, but i even didn't try to build underground. I thought about doing it, but as i have premade stuctures, it "feels more right" to build outside and consider the underground only for resources gathering.
I love seeing the different approaches people are taking here, too! This, too, isn't stated anywhere, but humans dislike living underground in Outer Colony. It harms their creativity and happiness if they're forced to do so for extended periods of time.
Everyone posting in this thread has been a tremendous resource for identifying ways to improve the game. It's always really exciting for me to see someone post feedback or suggest an area for improvement, and I think that every time one of these changes is made, the game gets a little bit more playable and fun. I like the idea of light structures underground in particular. There is an actual advantage to this, as temperatures are stable and comfortable underground. Right now, buildings aren't drawing power for HVAC, but when they do, a fully subterranean settlement would use less energy than its above-ground counterpart.
As a quick weekend update, I'm going to try to work on the duplicate name issues today, and I'm going to work more on identifying an isometric pixel artist to start remaking all the graphics. The sooner I find our new artist, the sooner that the longest and most expensive process can get underway, so it's my top priority for now. This is going to be a really busy week at work, but I'll keep you guys posted on progress as I get close to cutting another release.