Softly softly balance a monkey. So said no game designer ever - until now.
Yes, this small but important patch is an attempt to test some well needed balancing on reputation, crowding and shopping behaviour as I hinted at last week.
Actually, the changes aren't *that* soft, but hopefully improve balance, and address some core commuter behaviour niggles which have been thoughtfully raised by testers and Steam reviewers alike. They are by no means final, I'm sure I'll be tweaking more. Let's get into it.
Build 207:
Commuter behaviour changes:
-Overcrowding is LESS LIKELY. Quite a few people asking about this. The threshold for crowding is now reduced. They need to be standing in bigger bunches to feel crowded.
-Commuters will "mill" into open space more. So, when walking to a space, they will search further afield, and look for cells with fewer commuters in, reducing the likelihood of commuters bunching up and further reducing the likelihood of unnecessary crowding.
-Commuters have a 50% chance to walk more directly between shops (without a "mill* cycle, ie wandering off somewhere, first). This will increase throughput a fair amount. You will notice more commuter pathways between shops.
-Commuters can now correctly shop at the same shop twice if they needed 2 things there.
-Commuters will not erroneously say "NO SHOP" when a shop exists for that product. This a bug fix but I'll put it up here as relevant. Commuters were saying this even when standing next to the shop they needed. Annoying, right? Fixed.
-"NO SHOP" reputation penalty, aka the "bad shopping experience" has been changed beyond this. This is fairly critical. While the above bug made this hard to grok, you actually had to build multiple shops in every "contained area" of the station to prevent "NO SHOP" penalties. This no longer applies. If you have a shop for a product, you will never get a rep penalty for it, even if there is, say, a turnstile in the way. This should make the shop system fare more manageable and probably fairer. You can now just have one shopping district and not be penalised.
-However this change also makes the game "easier". Thus the rate of NO SHOP (governed by an internal need index for the product) is now slightly higher. If you don't have a shop commuters want, you will know about it and lose rep more. Did you know you could see what your commuters want in a bar chart? I bet you didn't. Use the reports and check your commuters needs! Or just click on the HUD at the top of the screen where it shows SHIFTED as a shortcut to that.
-Commuters feel more tired. It seems benches could be all but ignored up to now. I've increased tiredness so this is not so.
-The increased risk or tiredness and shopping are also intended to slightly balance the likely increased easiness of the game now Overcrowding is less a thing.
Bug fixes:
-Fixed very slightly jittering options menus
-Added entirely new Chinese translation. 添加了全新的中文翻译
-Fixed moving a powergen level 3 left a "dead" cell you could not build/sculpt
-Wheelie bins have no movement rep cost
-Indicators save and load correctly
So - want to help me? Start a new campaign and tell me how it feels. I'm sure more tweaking will be required, but hey, that's what we're here for right?!
Last point. Please let me know if you want the lose state - that "GAME OVER" thing when you hit 0% reputation - to happen? I may remove this in normal and have it only in hard. Alternatively, I may remove it in Easy only. Your thoughts, please. Ta!