Disconnected Colonists Testing

[Dacarnix]

I had some Harmonized Teros on a planet along with some Tinkers. Here is the population on that planet after colonizing the other planet in the system:

OldPlanet.jpg (23.66 KiB) Viewed 45897 times

I'm on the In_Development branch, so I expected to see the new disconnected Teros but instead saw this:

NewPlanet.jpg (15.68 KiB) Viewed 45897 times

The planet is still under my control and will never reach the point of rebellion. So it does not appear that the disconnected update is currently working as intended on the In_Development branch.

[Dacarnix]

Hmm... on second thought, perhaps that is "as intended," but it makes the new behavior feel very corner-case. The population did become discontent as well as disconnected, but if this is the intended new behavior, it will be extremely rare for a player to ever see the new disconnected population art.

It also doesn't make sense. They're suddenly not cyborgs because they're discontent?

No, I'm going to stick with "unintended" or at the very least "contrary to reasonable player expectations given the patch notes."

[sven]

No, I'm going to stick with "unintended" or at the very least "contrary to reasonable player expectations given the patch notes."

Yeah, this is almost certainly a bug in the colony base code. Thanks for the report. (You can upload games for reference by going to Options, and selecting "upload game logs", but this looks like a pretty simple bug, so that's probably not necessary here.)

[sven]

The planet is still under my control and will never reach the point of rebellion. So it does not appear that the disconnected update is currently working as intended on the In_Development branch.

Ok, I thought I knew where the bug was here, but it looks like I was wrong. Could you upload this save game using the "upload game logs" option?

[Dacarnix]

Yes, I can do that. My game log is 2-3 turns past when that happened, but there's a new thing to show in the current turn.

Moving Harmonized Lummox units to the new colony (with no Machine Altar yet) also resulted in not seeing the new disconnected artwork:

NotDisconnected.jpg (39 KiB) Viewed 45882 times

I've tried multiple ways now to make the disconnected population units show up and am just not seeing them, I'm afraid.

I'll upload the log now.

[sven]

I'm on the In_Development branch, so I expected to see the new disconnected Teros but instead saw this:

Ok, figured it out. I made a mistake when importing Arioch's art for the unhappy disconnected Teros, so the game couldn't find the correct art asset, and ended up falling back on the generic Teros art. A fix for that should be uploaded now.

[sven]

Moving Harmonized Lummox units to the new colony (with no Machine Altar yet) also resulted in not seeing the new disconnected artwork:

I've tried multiple ways now to make the disconnected population units show up and am just not seeing them, I'm afraid.

The problem here is that you're playing too well Arioch and I thought that it might be good if disconnected harmonized aliens didn't become unhappy immediately, but instead became unhappy over time (as with most other morale effects). But, that means if you do what you did here -- move in the harmonized pop, then immediately buy a machine altar the turn after, you'll never end up in the unhappy harmonized state.

[Dacarnix]

The problem here is that you're playing too well Arioch and I thought that it might be good if disconnected harmonized aliens didn't become unhappy immediately, but instead became unhappy over time (as with most other morale effects). But, that means if you do what you did here -- move in the harmonized pop, then immediately buy a machine altar the turn after, you'll never end up in the unhappy harmonized state.

Hmm...

Interesting.

That feels inconsistent with disconnected harmonized aliens colonizing planets, then. Why does colonization result in immediate response that same turn while transporting them from planet to planet gives you a one-turn grace period? Either both should have an immediate response or both should have a one-turn grace period.

[Dacarnix]

Hmm... maybe that only happened because of the Teros. I should test it with another type of aliens before assuming that's intended behavior. I've got some Yoral now. and will see if they get a one-turn grace period or not.

[sven]

That feels inconsistent with disconnected harmonized aliens colonizing planets, then. Why does colonization result in immediate response that same turn while transporting them from planet to planet gives you a one-turn grace period? Either both should have an immediate response or both should have a one-turn grace period.

The intended behavior is that both should have a grace period. Anytime you have harmonized aliens that end up disconnected, they end up being subject to the normal morale rules. And the normal morale rules only rarely instantly transform content pop into discontent pop -- most of the time, it takes time to move to the discontent state (how long, exactly, is random).

So, the intention is that if you setup a new colony with harmonized aliens, you'll probably see a warning after a turn or two that says something like "unrest at <wherever>". Which you can then counter by rush-building a machine altar.

The connection between discontent and disconnected alien pops might be made clearer if we had the lack of a machine altar cause harmonized aliens to instantly also become discontent -- but that's not what currently happens in the stable version of the game that's up on steam, and Arioch and I felt that changing the behavior so that it did happen instantly would punish new Tinkers players unnecessarily.

[Dragar]

Becoming immediately discontent is much more thematic though!