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Colony slow death by lack of documentation

5y
#1
Colony slow death by lack of documentation has been a feature of the game ever since my first colony...

with my 10th, it's still an issue.

Known traps:

-I can't figure out the learning rate for schools (with or without teachers) VS internet stations, so I can't pick the most efficient one. Having PLENTY of internet stations who don't require teachers didn't help, the schools didn't help, 99% of population TERMINALLY UNHAPPY from being uneducated from immigration day to the day they die (several centuries played)

-Even with my 10th colony, I frequently can't progress to the next thing before some documentation loophole kills my colony slowly. Sometimes it's because the buildings won't say what I need to build them (what buildbot) and I can't build them and I don't know why for months. People don't anwser these questions when I asked in forums. It REALLY should be a part of the game explaining "why can't I build this?" under a "cannot build even if you had ressources" type submenu.

-The game should give me a popup once in a blue moon if I need more atmosphere to get to the next level. I was stalled for 2 entire years the last time that info was missing.

-I still have colonies becoming "Everyone has a job, everyone is happy, everyone has food and water, everyone is off duty all of the real life day I try desperately to produce 2 microship more or 255 science more to get something" and putting no-rendering-colonists and other performance friendly options, nothing seems to help.

-At my 10th city, I still can't get halfway thru the game, and still have 3 to 4 different unexplained problems EACH TIME

-The game needs a NPC robot advisor to give you some GODDAMN HINTS once in a while. YES, REALLY. With a capacity to turn it off once you learn what the game should have explained in tooltips all along.
5y
#2
The game is almost full documented.

https://www.my-colony.com/reference/index.html

In this site, you can read everything (building cost, tech, Requirements, build by, ecc), storage value, Resource transformed and produced every tick or minute.

For the Schools problems, i use a "real life" system, in a new colony: Some Sm. Elementary, after Hight School, after Sm. Community College (1-2, depend on the colony size), and after few day Transcendet Academy.
5y
#3
I have all of these except transcendent academy. It's been 1 real life week since my IQ stopped at 110 but a large chunk of my population is student in the high end buildings who has lots of teachers, but there is no progress and not a SINGLE colonist seem interested in some jobs.

All students and all teachers under view have no age, no happyness, no money number, all NaN style, so I suspect the game sorta simulate what it can't calculate individually --- but for some chunk of education that's done wrong.

And of course my population is terminally unhappy from being uneducated for the duration, except logically the teachers (I have max teachers in each school) but even calculating how many teachers I have in my small community college, the number of people unhappy from lack of education doesn't make sense since the requirements of that teacher job. It's same in all my education building types.

So where does the database help???

NONE of the buildings have a education/IQ gained by tick math on it. I can't know if one is 1000 times less efficient than the other, and how much 1 teacher is different from 0, and so on. GUESSWORK hasn't worked and having some of each never broke the 110 IQ limit.

There are currently 250 people in the small community college, whose IQ limit is 130, the teachers are maxxed and teachers require 130 IQ...

...yet since ALL students and ALL teachers in ALL education buildings have NaN stats, and are probably estimated from the non-simulated truly calculated individuals (of which there is none) then that means no education progress. IS THAT THE PROBLEM? Fire drills doesn't fix it. Killing simulated colonists doesn't fix it. 1 week of real life time doesn't fix it.

I looked at the entire database, there is no info in the database about education that isn't in the ingame information. The database does not have an "IQ" entry either. There is simply no way to know for sure ANYTHING about why my colony is stuck.

And oh, it's probably stuck at several undocumented levels simultaneously, but education is an obvious one.
5y
#4
Ansom said:The game is almost full documented.

https://www.my-colony.com/reference/index.html

In this site, you can read everything (building cost, tech, Requirements, build by, ecc), storage value, Resource transformed and produced every tick or minute.


Yes, this is where I spent an average of 1.5 real life days until I figure out what should have been in a tooltip all along --- so that I KNOW WHICH INFORMATION I WANT BECAUSE THE CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM IS OBVIOUS.

But without the tooltips, I can't know what information I need since the problem can be a large number of not-documented-ingame things so I have to check them all --- and once I check them all I am usually wrong on all guesses, and the ENTIRE database has to be scummed one by one to finally stumble on an UNGUESSABLE rule somewhere that requires something.

...For the love of God --- let us know why we're stuck, and let us eyeball the full building stats ingame each time we look at the building tooltip or from the menu or something so we're not forced to do a 3-minutes database dive for EACH AND EVERY SINGLE NEW BUILDING.

P.S.: the database is viewable at a rate of one entry per 3 minutes at best, since last year, for some reason. Usually worse when searching for building whose name starts with something really common. It was BAD when it was FAST, now it's making the game unplayable.
5y
#5
Also change job doesn't work.

Despite having a robot factory and both tech the reference site says I need, I can't build "Construction Drone".

The fact the game doesn't warn I need to make construction drones to make buildings (since I'd have to manually look up tech I already have to look what can construct buildings I could make if I had a construction drone) is compounded by the fact making construction drones isn't fully documented by the reference material.

3 days stuck. Chat didn't help. This is a decent case of lack of documentation making players stuck.

OF COURSE you could tell me the anwser, but why is it not inside the game itself in an OBVIOUS place? It would have saved me several hours of reference database diving to know why I am not progressing, and which buildings I can't make for unclear reasons.

If you expect players to manually write down buildings each tech unlocks just in case it's an "unlock but not really" and the building isn't available in construction menus, just to make sure they don't miss anything, you REALLY are the enemy of game documentation.

PLZ document the game better. It would certainly double the time people spend playing average, and thus double premium sales.
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Ape Apps, LLC is an independent software development company founded in 2010 by Brandon Stecklein. Over the years, Ape Apps has published over 400 apps and games across various platforms. You can get in touch with Brandon on Twitter or by leaving a post on his wall @bastecklein
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