Test And Discover : Plantation

[Captain Jack]

You are both right.
Right now, you are in the ocean. It's not as hard as it seems though.

Our initial reason for not giving so much feedback, was what psychodad says. Plus, we do want to obscure some parts, to allow you to improvise.

Then wolfie came, with an excellent idea. Orders. During beta we will add this sub-system. Orders will help the system understand what you are trying to do. Then, it will provide you feedback based on the orders you gave versus the actual commands you have made. Then, it will even suggest you what to do to reach what you want. Of course, commands will also affect your plantation but their affects will be slight. Their major functionality will be to link the in-depth plantations system with something that a player can realize.

There is something more, the warning system. The basic form of this, will be available till tomorrow I hope. At its full version, you could have a hireable plantation headmaster. You will train him too or sell him (trade him) with other players (he will be placed at the ship market most probably, no need to create new market types for this). So, at its early version, the warnings will be few and very specific, when things go grim. With the plantation headmaster (janitor/whatever you want) you will get more info. That's out of the scope of this topic though.

[Greythorn]

CJ

Thank you for the quick response.
I understand wanting to keep some of the underling mechanics hidden as to allow for player experimentation. However, as this is beta, without some guidance in how the overall (not specific) mechanics work, we (as the player base) can not provide you with effective feedback. We spend more time guessing (as psychodad also indicated). So my question is, should we wait for Orders?

[Captain Jack]

Definitely not wait for anything. What you got is what we had in mind initially. It is also fair game to get some trial and error early on.

What I described above, have to be considered as addons. Not necessarily to make your life easier but mostly as integral parts to assist you in what is coming next (I am talking about events which are yet not activated).

[Grimrock Litless]

There is a number of problems.

Because so much of the plantation runs on the number of hands (Population) you have. Those people need to be feed, and they are not producing the number of food needed to feed themself, just think about that.

I have 30k people work on a 100 gold upgrade, and it still takes 2 week. The upgrades are taking too long.

I have been maintaining all the Facilities, but see no change or results. I am assuming that, they only do anything once they have had a star.

I would like to be able to cancel old improvement actions, they take far too long, this is why this is a must.

You said that you just need more hands, but, so far everyone has been telling me that feeding the workers and not transporting them is the problem.

I need more details on how Workload and Diet works, since they are the values that is the hardest to test on.

Like some people said, there is a need to show people the hourly production so people know how much the values interact with each other.

While plantation only started, and you said that it would work, I am not so sure right now.

I am not really sure, why is it working in a way of, Improve using gold bars, I am assuming that, each adds a bit of value to a hidden value that makes it more effective?

While it maybe a good idea to have trial and error for the players, there are too much uncertain values, or hidden values, that you can't really find out and forces us to guess.

[sXs]

Does the size of your plantation affect the completion times for upgrades?

[Captain Jack]

@Grimrock
Plantations are a simulation. We can't know before hand what your hourly production will be.
Plus, you need to ask yourself: If I keep adding 1200 workers per hour, what value an hourly production has?

Grimrock, the feature metrics are hard to get in under a day. If you do not have the patience or the will to go through trial and error, stay away of this feature.It is still a beta and I do not remember telling anyone that it is going to be easy. In contrary, I would say.

Now, if you expect to master it in like 16 hours since its release and you are pissed for not managing it, then I guess you are being unreasonable.

Now, your base confusion is coming from how construction works. For your good info, this is only one part of the plantations that you will need to crack. OR you could not attempt to crack ANY and simple trust your instincts.

@Everyone
When trusting your instincts, there is one key fact to keep in mind. These acres, every one of them, is a big lot.
You should also keep in mind that Earth has 7B and it is at year 2018. Avonmora has 37B and is at year 1600!
Remember, a fleet here can move 1200 workers in under an hour. How many workers a fleet could move back in 1600 and in how much time?

All metrics make sense eventually. However, the worker numbers might appear a bit off. They are not really off. They are off based on our perception.

So, Grimrock, by the game standards, your 30k workers are a drop in the ocean.


@Feniks
No, it does not matter. Picture upgrades like this:

(Example, random metrics)

Task: I want to construct 1 house. How much will it take me?
Answer: We will need about 6 months and around 10 people to do it, for the cost of 10 gold bars.
Question: This is really a long time. Can we do any sooner?
Answer: Sure, if you give me 50 workers more, I can do it in just 2 months!
Question: How about if I give you 100 workers more?
Answer: Well, it won't make a huge difference, but it might help us reducing this time further.

[Grimrock Litless]

Oh, I see, it's going to be something that takes lots of time and resources, similar to Goldsmith.

[sXs]

Grim, A lot of the numbers were skewed until you reach a certain level of workers in your plantation. Once you reach that "level" of workforce you can simply play with acre allocation and find the sweet spots. Inititally it made no sense but I kept adding workers and then things started to become clear.

[Cgoody]

Still having tons of trouble figuring out proper allotments. I don't know if I'm supposed to be adjusting it so the workers in each section are somewhat even except for utility buildings, or if I should make the allotments somewhat even and have the workers distributed unevenly.

Also I think my entire work force is about to drink Jim Jones' Kool-aid. But that's besides the point :p

[Cgoody]

Any general hint or tip on that would be greatly appreciated. Paid for, even :p