I'm about 30 hours in and enjoying the game so far.
From a dev's perspective, the one thing I really can't wrap my brain around is the fact that work zones are only defined by objects within a space, not the space itself.
While I get that the purpose of that is to make sure that staff are attached to things, not space (because they need to perform actions based on objects, essentially), the problem with it is that habitats break all the in game space rules.
What I mean by that is this: staff routines, pathing, actions are constrained by energy. That's how the entire staffing and work zone mechanic works. As players, we have to manage staff according to how much energy it takes to do the things they need to do. In general that breaks down by how many tasks per x time.
The problem is that habitats include something that isn't really measured by the game for staff, which is distance.
So the rules of habitats that apply to everything else suddenly break where Keepers are involved.
I can have a limitlessly large habitat, that in practical terms the keeper can't maintain, and the game has no fix for that. Because distance isn't measured.
We have to be able to divide habitats into smaller parts, space wise. Areas within habitats have to be able to be added to work zones, so keepers can access the habitats through different gates. Feed troughs, and other objects that require interaction can then be also assigned to a zone, which keeps with the rules of design of the game, and also with the resource management system.
Otherwise it really is broken if our habitats are large.
The obvious fix for this is to create a barrier like the null barrier, whose only function is to demarcate a zone edge within the barrier. Call it a Zone Marker or something. Then the internal shape within that marker or outside of it becomes selectable, within the work zone UI or the Barrier UI. Any interactable object within that area for staff is automatically included in that zone. Alternatively, the default zone for food dishes etc. could be the entire habitat, but if I put two dishes down and want each dish to be in a different zone, then the line equidistant between the two dishes becomes the zone boundary, which is I'm sure how other objects in the game work.
(This brings up a whole different issue, which is that there's no UI redundancy between things like staff and zone objects, with the work zones. I should be able add an object to a work zone from the work zone UI, but I should also be able to add an object to a zone on object creation, in a dropdown. So if I make a solar panel, I can just add it to a zone from the solar panel's UI as I create it. It would also mean I could select and add a group of objects to a work zone as a selected group. Same as it is for staff.)
From a dev's perspective, the one thing I really can't wrap my brain around is the fact that work zones are only defined by objects within a space, not the space itself.
While I get that the purpose of that is to make sure that staff are attached to things, not space (because they need to perform actions based on objects, essentially), the problem with it is that habitats break all the in game space rules.
What I mean by that is this: staff routines, pathing, actions are constrained by energy. That's how the entire staffing and work zone mechanic works. As players, we have to manage staff according to how much energy it takes to do the things they need to do. In general that breaks down by how many tasks per x time.
The problem is that habitats include something that isn't really measured by the game for staff, which is distance.
So the rules of habitats that apply to everything else suddenly break where Keepers are involved.
I can have a limitlessly large habitat, that in practical terms the keeper can't maintain, and the game has no fix for that. Because distance isn't measured.
We have to be able to divide habitats into smaller parts, space wise. Areas within habitats have to be able to be added to work zones, so keepers can access the habitats through different gates. Feed troughs, and other objects that require interaction can then be also assigned to a zone, which keeps with the rules of design of the game, and also with the resource management system.
Otherwise it really is broken if our habitats are large.
The obvious fix for this is to create a barrier like the null barrier, whose only function is to demarcate a zone edge within the barrier. Call it a Zone Marker or something. Then the internal shape within that marker or outside of it becomes selectable, within the work zone UI or the Barrier UI. Any interactable object within that area for staff is automatically included in that zone. Alternatively, the default zone for food dishes etc. could be the entire habitat, but if I put two dishes down and want each dish to be in a different zone, then the line equidistant between the two dishes becomes the zone boundary, which is I'm sure how other objects in the game work.
(This brings up a whole different issue, which is that there's no UI redundancy between things like staff and zone objects, with the work zones. I should be able add an object to a work zone from the work zone UI, but I should also be able to add an object to a zone on object creation, in a dropdown. So if I make a solar panel, I can just add it to a zone from the solar panel's UI as I create it. It would also mean I could select and add a group of objects to a work zone as a selected group. Same as it is for staff.)
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