Hello!
It's probably not a secret that the 0.8.3 content update was released in a bit of a rough shape. My apologies for that. As the feature set expands, it gets increasingly time consuming for me to test for every single possible case. So, here's a much improved version. It fixes most (if not all) reported issues while improving or adding many little things. The changelog is nearly as long as for 0.8.3 :)
Beside the extensive bug fixing, there are a few important changes that will definitely make a lot of you very happy, starting with:
No More Lemmings
Survivors had a bad habit of trying to retrieve absolutely everything (dead bodies included) that has been dropped on the ground with no regard for their own safety. In some situations, it could easily lead to their death, causing even more people to get killed trying to retrieve all the shiny loot. Basically this:
Well, no more.
First, as long as you're in combat mode, civilians will automatically ignore any dead body or dropped loot. The game will assume that if you're in combat, it's probably not a good moment for your peons to retrieve loot.
Secondly, 2 checkboxes have been added in the faction menu, as shown in this screenshot:
They are kind of self-explanatory. If unticked, survivors will no longer try to retrieve dead bodies or loot coming from dead things, globally. When the situation is resolved, you can tick those checkboxes and they'll start doing it again. Tiles with "forbidden loot" have a distinctive icon.
Of course, items dropped by factories, raze orders and so on will still be collected.
Also, knowing that there are some cases when you'd want to prevent dead people's loot from being retrieved globally, but still want a specific tile to be collected. Well, it's also possible! Just "raze" the tile you want your settlers to collect nonetheless, the "no collect" icon will disappear and your guys will consider the location safe.
I think it's a slightly more elegant system than adding zones everywhere. At least I want to give this system a trial run. If it's not satisfactory, it won't be a problem to switch to something more involved.
Ease of Use
If you're continuing a save, this will only apply to newly spawned agents, but from now on all dead bodies will decay no matter if they are in a in corpse disposal or not. They still decay faster in a corpse disposal (and won't make nearby people sick). This change is mostly there to make the Last Stand scenario less of a pain. Given that it's generally not possible to clean up dead bodies in the kill zone before the next wave, corpses would pile up indefinitely (or you'd be forced to make a corpse disposal in the kill zone, which, sure, works, but is kind of an "exploit") .
No accidental deletion of staircases anymore: You can now safely "raze" a whole room without having to be super careful, the stairs will be ignored if there are multiple objects in the selection. If you want to raze one, it must be the only object in your selection. The message log will inform you of that fact if you try to raze a whole room with stairs inside.
Farms no longer require purified water. They will still accept it, but if dirty water is available, they will generally favor it.
Repair Zones can overlap with other zones. Anyone who tried to defend a closed off base against wall eating shamblers will appreciate. Zones in general are less visually obnoxious: I made them a lot more transparent with a solid border.
Expeditions
Having to disband an expedition each time you want to retrieve its cargo was kind of annoying. A new button has been added to just "unload cargo", so they are ready to go back on the job pretty much immediately.
The menu to remove items from their inventory is nicer to look at, and more importantly it will inform you of the space you're about to free. In the same spirit of simplicity, looting duration is defaulted to "until full".
Finally, when an expedition is not doing anything, its members will heal passively.
General Notes
Not all the above systems are perfect, and I'm sure some tweaks will be needed. I also still have a couple things to add and tweak before getting to the second part of the overhaul, but nothing major.
Cheers!
Full Changelog
- AI: Survivors will automatically ignore jobs to retrieve dead bodies (and loot dropped from them) while you're in combat mode
- Balance: Razing spider webs (the decoration) will give spider web (the item) when disassembled (might only work on a new game)
- Balance: Stairs can only be destroyed when they are the ONLY item in the selection (to make the clearing of rooms with stairs less "risky")
- Balance: Expedition members will slowly heal damage when not receiving/executing orders
- Balance: Expedition loot order duration defaulted to "Until Full" (it just makes more sense given that the job can be interrupted)
- Balance: Farms will favor dirty water over cleaned water whenever available
- Balance: Fixed exploit where shooting down some of the animals (cows, sheep) would yield the same as butchering them
- Balance: All bodies will decay no matter if inside or outside of a corpse disposal (just a lot slower when not) to make some scenarios less of a pain
- Content: The retrieval of dead bodies (and/or their loot) can be disabled globally in the Faction menu
- Content: Loot disabled that way can selectively be retrieved using the raze order
- Content: Added standard pickup to suburbs and city center loot tables (slightly better than the one you can 'research')
- Content: Added order to "drop cargo and get back to work" to expeditions (so you don't have to rebuild an expedition each time you drop cargo at base)
- Engine: Regular code and data cleanup to keep the rot away
- Engine: Reduced CPU usage of farms (not that it was high to begin with)
- Graphics: Zones and rooms are a lot more transparent but with visible border lines, making them less intrusive graphically
- UI: Better looking "drop item" menu for expeditions' inventory which also show the weight being dropped
- UI: Slightly reorganized the Faction menu (settlement tab is shown first as it became the most useful now)
- UI: More information in game log when razing something as a way to indirectly document the changes about stairs and loot
- UI: In the encyclopedia, techs which can only be looted will appear as such instead of showing a "research difficulty" rating
- UI: In the depot menu, items are sorted alphabetically
- UI: Minor graphical improvements, text alignment in various menus
- Fixed: Some mob types (under rare circumstances) could be incorrectly be flagged as neutral in the user interface
- Fixed: Animals found by expeditions wouldn't be converted into proper agent when loot is being dropped in the base
- Fixed: Rare pathfinder issues (on very narrow/long paths) caused by a change in 0.8.2.4
- Fixed: Animals from expeditions spawning as civilian instead of player owned
- Fixed: Debris (from clutter having been shot at) would resurrect themselves if the game is saved/loaded before the debris disappear
- Fixed: Dead NPC and settlers would emit a dying sound when a savegame is loaded
- Fixed: Multiple minor issues with dead things not always staying dead and other similar oddities caused by the new savegame format
- Fixed: Repair zones couldn't intersect with other zones (or each other) making them very annoying to setup
- Fixed: Gun turrets placed on the map during map generation could spawn "decayed" (without the shooting part)
- Fixed: "Salvaged Ambulance" and "Salvaged Sports Car" technologies had missing icons
- Fixed: If a survivor has part of what is needed for a construction, but the rest is not accessible (locked door or something), they could freeze
- Fixed: It was not possible to loot a place you've taken over (regression bug in 0.8.4)
- Fixed: Minor issue when closing the Garage menu if the settler selection panel is still open
- Fixed: Many potential issues when trying to setup 2 expeditions at the same time (the same settlers or items could be added to both, locking them in a non working state)
- Fixed: Wooden trailer was altering people capacity instead of cargo capacity
- Fixed: Performance loss in 0.8.3 and semi regular micro freeze in very largely populated bases (>50 people)
- Fixed: Job manager wouldn't notice if incapacitated people died before being move, keeping the jobs stored for longer than necessary
- Fixed: Issue with dead body disposal job that could cause settler to "move" already deleted bodies