The beauty of exploration is that you never know what you're going to find... this is an old school RPG type game, where you learn as you go, plus I was never a fan of people who check the wikias for their games to go better :P
On the other hand, the second question is pertinent. Yes, workers are permanent!!
The buildings and their costs unlock as you get the right things for them... For starters, nobody has enough wood to build a basic shelter still, but when they hit 10 wood they will be unlocked for that person.
The quests have different modifiers and so a lot of the outcome depends on what you take or dont for a quest, BUT a certain random factor as well.
For instances, do you want to search for natives without an escort?
As far as the benefits for upvoting these posts, good idea, so far the total income from the posts is distributed towards the participants, even @defor who died of scurvy.
I'm all for learning as you go - but we need some information. For example you say:
Can we at least know what buildings are available, what they do, and how much they cost? A big part of these games is having goals and planning but if we have literally no information then we will just have to do things randomly and hope it happens to work out.
Should i get 20 lumberjacks or 1 farmer? I have no idea.
I didn't know you can "take" things on a quest...what things can you take? How does that help you? I didn't know you can have an escort either.
It sounds like you came up with a really awesome and intricate game but all of us don't have any idea what's going on or what we can or should be doing!
Buildings are hidden until their cost is met, surprise factor.
Your goal should be to expand the colony and increase its profitability as well as your chances at getting extra income.
Well 20 lumberjacks or 1 farmer... one gives you a good amount of wood per week, while the other gives you food. What do you want?
Ever played an idle game or management game? You buy stuff without knowing the exact output numbers. Of course a farmer gives you more food than a forager. 20 lumberjacks would be good to get a lot of wood and unlock buildings for instances, since you'll be meeting their requirements....
So think of it in a tactical standpoint...
This game is along the lines of - what kind of stuff do I want to figure out?
I made it this way because variety will shape colonies to be different, different focuses will develop colonies in unique ways, specializing them.
Think about the things you can unlock with stone, wood, different workers... then take the necessary measures.
Your colonists are at your command, you can order them to do everything, but they won't perform out of their specialization... for instances, order 20 lumberjack to mine for stone, they'll do it, but the results would be less than optimal.
It's natural for people to be a little bit disoriented with the game, it's on purpose, to hide the features until the way people play the game unlocks them. Plus, from an organizational standpoint it's the best choice.
If you have any doubt, just ask, just don't ask me about future unlocks, like buildings, techs and so on, I want players to have their prefered way of playing reward them for it.
Hope to have cleared the air a bit for you, but open to questions.
Thanks - I'm good with not knowing the unlocks and whatnot if that's how you want it. But just from this convo i've learned a lot of information that I would think should be made available...like that colonists can do other things outside their specialty, for example.
It sounds like you know what you're doing, but my suggestion, as a professional game developer and designer for the past 7 years, is to write up a post that explains how the game works and all the things you can do - like an instruction manual.
Even starting with how we take our turns - the assumption is that we comment on the post here, but it doesn't actually say that anywhere. Is there a time limit by when we have to submit our moves? Can we change them by editing the comment? If so, by when are they considered final?
Sorry to be such a pain - i'm just really excited about this :-)
Thank you for the input. I agree.... I'm going to make it today's post.
Hopefully it will help everyone and I'll include a link to in down on the footer of each week's update.
Glad to have a professional opinion, and a free one even :D
Thanks man!
Yea well my professional experience doesn't help nearly as much as spending my entire childhood playing games while my parents yelled at me to go outside - but it definitely sounds better!
Can't wait for the post, and to start up my kickass colony!
Wow, that's a serious gamer! I used to dream of doing game design when I was a kid and programmed super simple stuff when I got my first computer, but unfortunately all the past. Sounds like serious competition or friendship opportunity in this game so. Still not sure how diplomacy works but Hi! 👋?