BEACON update 🥓

[Polyphemus]

@sheralmyst

…are we still able to undo the negative traits?

In some cases, yes. The other day I was visited by a Korvax whose offering (for payment) replaced “oppressive atmosphere” with “blessed by the waters”.

It seems pretty random - and when you accept visitors, citizen expeditions, and/or research suggestions, you often don’t know what the exact outcome will be - so there’s an element of chance. I haven’t actually had a really bad outcome yet - but I imagine it could happen.

(edit) I allowed some of my citizens to go on an expedition. They came back with some worthwhile discoveries, but whilst away, they had drunk the water, and were now contagious, infecting the settlement with “creeping glass”. One of my options was to quarantine them - which I did. It turned out to be a good thing - “quarantined settlers” is positive (green) in the traits list, and actually increases production.

[Polyphemus]

My two settlements have sentinel attack countdown timers. When the timer reaches 100%, an attack is due.

Then the alarms sound, my citizens run for cover, and a red warning appears on my screen.

Then… nothing. The alarms continue to sound, but no sentinels appear. The alarms only stop when I leave the settlement. When I come back, all is peaceful - there is no damage, and the attack timer has reset to zero.

I’m not complaining - I have no great desire to be constantly battling sentinels - but something odd is going on.

[toddumptious]

I do kind of like how we aren’t in full control, we aren’t micro managing the settlement or it’s people, we just oversee things and sometimes that leads to things out of our control. Which is what most jobs are actually like, whereas videogames tend to want to let you do everything… Which I think actually could set some people up for failure as they enter the workforce and they try to do everyones job at the same time I’m sure that hasn’t happened but I can’t rule out that it won’t or has.

@AdaRynin

The settlements have always had visual differences. Gek lived in wood themed buildings, Vy’Keen in Stone and Korvax in the Metal/Alloy base part variants. Now they do seem to have unique qualities too, e.g an Autophage Settlement has a stealth generator that makes sentinel attacks occur with less frequency compared to other settlements.

I also have noticed a few new building types in the Autophage settlements. These could have themed variants for the other settlements but I’ve yet to be asked to build anything I havent seen before in my vy’keen/gek settlements. The Autophage are definitely the most drastically different to the settlements we’ve known. They all had the same sort of habitats and storage rooms etc, Autophage settlements have a unique building for sleep pods.

I am going to assume that the original 3 settlements are they way they always were, more or less identical but with different building material and that they only used the time given to make unique buildings for the Autophage, they in themselves bein unique and seperate from the other lifeforms who live and interact in this universe, where cultural and ideological exchange can take place (leading to some homogenisation )

But I welcome change to the original 3 too (if there hasnt been new additions already outside of the fishing hole), some more bespoke buildings themed to their races traits etc. I was even thinking, with my theory on this year being nothing but POI updates for Worlds pt1/2, that we may get some better visual distinction between vy’keen, gek and korvax planetside buildings.

They tend to look very similar, and with settlements having themed building materials to a race, and the autophage looking so drastically different from everything elses buildings, those planetside habitats seem even more out of place and less signifying of who even built it.

And we can just have the old building styles still remain in abandoned systems, much like the old space stations. Let them become the systems of versions past

@Polyphemus Maybe the gl455 in your settlers who drank the water is causing the alarm to trigger falsely “dissonace detected! dissonance detected! dissonance det-SHUT UP!”

[Polyphemus]

You can only upgrade one building at a time. Once work has started, you have to wait for the timer to expire, then you go back, and open the building. Until you open the building, you can’t start on another one.

Settlements are scattered about in no particular order. The buildings all face in different directions. The only way to tell that a building is ready to be opened is a green “coin” will hover over the building’s terminal - but this is often hidden.

Buildings requiring attention don’t show up on the scanner. Sometimess, a building undergoing renovation will acquire scaffolding, but not always.

When I need to open a building, I nearly always have to search for it. It’s far from obvious which building I’m supposed to attend to. After the 60th search, it becomes both time-wasting and irritating.

A building requiring my attention - although you wouldn’t know it viewed from this angle.

Ah! there’s the damned thing - hidden under the awning (and facing the wrong direction). Note - not a piece of scaffolding in sight. Nothing to indicate this building needs attention.

[sheralmyst]

@toddumptious

we aren’t in full control, we aren’t micro managing

If I am going to be the mayor then by gollies there WILL be pets allowed! Even if I have to call in the sentinels and deport those who don’t agree, there WILL be pets allowed!

[toddumptious]

Getting a request to bring home a native creature from a nearby system that the settlers find cute only to have them become the defacto domesticated creatures that wander your settlement, would be a VERY nice feature.

If only for that sci fi trope of “the cute animals we all adopted transform into terror beasts every 100 cycles so we are doomed”

@Polyphemus It’s not the games fault you didn’t understand the basic direction spoken in the cosmic standard, everyone knows “boop” means “behind you! NO! the other behind you!” The Sentry tried to help.

[Polyphemus]

@toddumptious

the cute animals we all adopted transform into terror beasts

It would be a lot more imaginative if the writers were to learn from actual nature - and have the terror beasts discover that if they’re nice to the humans and cuddle up in bed with them, they will get housed, fed, pampered and played with for the rest of their lives.

There was a time when cats and dogs were tigers and wolves. Then they discovered the trick.

[toddumptious]

This is all lies, one of my cats is still a terror beast and I can feel him watching me from the shadows somewhere as I type. It’s only a game to him that he has allowed me to survive this long, sadistic as he is adorable.

[Polyphemus]

I never suggested they stopped being terror beasts. I only observed that they’d learned the trick.

Keep on the good side of that cat, or one day you’ll wake up with your eyeballs missing.

[sheralmyst]

Watch out…he will suck up all your breath while you sleep

I found a wonderful paradise planet with no war and no sentinels and it has a Gek settlement on it.
I will be spending a lot of time here

However, this settlement is about as anti-Gek as it gets.

I understand the gas outbreaks but that would never make a Gek unhappy

[toddumptious]

It could be Vy’Keen gas? I reckon they eat a lot of protein bars and hit the gym regularly… Even a hardened Gek couldn’t enjoy those musical scents.

[Clemm]

@sheralmyst

My Vy’Keen settlement is quite sad.
No pets allowed

Well, they might be allowed if identified as food.

[jedidia]

@toddumptious

It could be Vy’Keen gas? I reckon they eat a lot of protein bars and hit the gym regularly

It’s the GRAH, obviously!

[toddumptious]

Oh my, this changes everything

[Polyphemus]

I think that once your 18 settlement trait slots are full, any extras you earn get added to the bottom, the whole list moves up, and the one at the top is lost.

If this is true, then theoretically you can eventually get rid of all your negative traits - but you may have to ditch some very desirable ones to do it.

There’s also the problem, as I said in an earlier post, that you don’t know what the outcome of some of these transactions is going to be until after you’ve completed it.

[Polyphemus]

A couple of examples of something I mentioned in an earlier post - these contributions to the settlements not only add new desirable features, but they also remove undesirable ones.

[toddumptious]

I like that they’re wise enough to realise,

“We’re gonna have to lift the dancing ban if they’re going to be injecting themselves with Hormones or we will have a Kevin Bacon led mob strutting their way right up to the overseers office. I’ve seen this happen in several systems”

[sheralmyst]

I have noticed now that upon accepting a new settlement, my pilots immediately show up wandering around. As I improve the settlement, citizens begin to show up and the number increases with improvements.
Has anyone done a head count? Do we have the actual number of the population roaming around?

[Polyphemus]

@sheralmyst

Do we have the actual number of the population roaming around?

Both my settlements are now approaching class S in all buildings. Both are showing a healthy balance of production over expenditure. However, population and happiness are both hovering around 30%. I could handle a lot more residents - but I’m not sure where they come from.

[toddumptious]

I’ve had a few requests that add +1 to population. I also had an expedition go bad and lost a settler '^ _ ^