2 Issues - Building Repairs and Abandoned Undesirable Homes

Farthest Frontier Ideas and Feedback
1

Firstly, love the game. 109hrs so far and ticking! :slight_smile: <3

This post has two issues in one.

Firstly – I do love how buildings get old and need repairs. I hate however that there is no way to prioritize buildings for repair like you can when building.

This leaves important buildings vulnerable. For example, as we know, many buildings in the town tend to go into the ‘need repair’ status all at once—you end up with a dozen or more buildings across your settlement all needing repairs at once. Amongst them may be your Theatre, Trading Post, Barracks, Towers, Markets, School etc etc. These can be vital to your town’s set up.

But it is the luck of the draw which buildings your builders will prioritize for repairs.

This means you must watch helpless as one or more of these vital buildings get condemned and fall to rubble. You may have all the resources available for the target building to be repaired you may have dozens of builders and laborers available, but your builders are off repairing a random manor or homestead instead. This is heartbreaking—and game quitting.

So, first suggestion: Please add a Prioritize Repair option so we can protect vital buildings.

This follows into the second issue. When you lose one of your vital buildings that affect desirability you will then see sizeable portions of your residences suddenly becoming undesirable. Eventually these residents will abandon the home.

This results in having 60+ people in your town homeless, living on the street, dying through winter, and leaving town—but there are 10+ perfectly good houses that are only abandoned because the desirability tanked when you couldn’t repair your theatre in time because you couldn’t tell your builders to prioritize those repairs.

For people to be dying on your streets and leaving town while there are vacant homes is simply wrong.

This is more frustrating because the only reason those homes are vacant is because you couldn’t repair a Theatre in time—can you guess what is happening in my village right now? Hahahah!! :smiley:

So, second suggestion(s): Instead of the harsh punishment of the citizen simply abandoning a residence when desirability drops either/or:

  • Extend the time before abandonment.
  • Have a sequence of consequences before abandonment: i.e. Stage 1-Unhappy, Stage-2 Unhappy + not paying taxes, Stage-3 Rioting in the streets, Stage-4 Abandon building.

I do hope this issue is resolved, especially the first suggestion because it really is a game quitter.

Thanks for your consideration.

4 Likes
2

For me the game has become completely unplayable because of the broken repair mechanic. The saves break upon load and all of my buildings are severely damaged and none of the builders will repair them. Then they become condemned and my only option is to salvage and start over.

Once this bug is fixed, I think it’s an interesting mechanic, just needs to be fixed.

3

Yes, exactly.

This is compounded by the fact that, during this “everything is falling into disrepair” crisis, resources like timber and bricks (and builders) are already being depleted as they are poured into repairs and you sometimes can’t afford, or don’t want to afford, the extra cost of rebuilding these condemned buildings.

You are desperately holding off hoping you might save a school or a barn or something.

The only ‘control’ I could identify is that repairs were done in proximity radius from the stockyards that I had dedicated to just building materials. So, builders will prioritize which building to repair based on “which is the shortest distance” from the materials to a building needing repairs.

I could find no way to alter that hardcoded AI logic.

This would all be solved if you could simply have direct control over which buildings were prioritized for repairs. There is already a “Prioritize Building” function, so the coding architecture is already there. You would just need to lift and shift that over to repairs.

4

After the 0.7.5d bugfix my buildings were fine for a while and now the same thing as described is happening all over again. Many many buildings are going into the red structural integrity area and my builders or laborers (who is actually fixing the buildings??) are busy doing something else or the needed ressources (at the moment I estimate I need around 500 wood planks to repair buildings all at once but am also doing need construction elsewhere in town for probably double the cost.

Another probably important thing I just witnessed:
I followed a builder who was “handling upkeep” who was carrying around just 1 brick. Before the builder ever got to actually handling the upkeep she dropped the brick on the road and went to stock her shelter.
image
It’s really frustrating to witness this and see the perfectly fine village fall into ruins after this chain of events gets triggered.

2 Likes
5

Couldn’t agree more. The building repair issues are sucking all the joy out of the game.

6

Anyone still experiencing repair issues, we’d be interested to see if the system works better for you in the v0.7.5f playtest we just put up. See the playtest forum for more info:
https://forums.crateentertainment.com/c/farthest-frontier/public-testing-discussion/44

2 Likes
7

Thank you for replying, Zantai. Really appreciated.

From V0.7.5f Changelog

  • Building Repair costs now cap out at 50% of the original cost, down from 100%.
  • Building Repairs now accumulate slower, giving builders more time to get around to making repairs.
  • Builders now perform repairs faster and sooner, at 60% remaining durability, previously 40%.

Glad to see you amazing folks are addressing this. These changes would help—a lot.

I would still like to emphasize how much a “Prioritize Repair” check box in the building window would help. In fact, I am certain that my current crisis could have been completely circumvented if I could simply have control over which buildings were repaired first.

Cheers.

8

That is something we definitely want to do, but for now we want to get the fundamental system functional and in people’s hands.

2 Likes
9

I just followed a bunch of builders to investigate what’s happening and noticed that the few that actually aren’t idling or stocking their shelter are carrying only 1 brick or 4 wood planks when the buildings need multiples of that, so that the building loses more durability during their travelling time then they actually fix.
Saved the game for now and will look into the playtest tomorrow. :sleeping:

Thanks for being so active Zantai, it’s good to see that the people who are working on the game actually value and consider the feedback and bug reports. :smiley: :+1:

2 Likes
10

Thats a very interesting point you came up with!
This sequence of happenings before the total abandonment is super cool and very satisfying.
Gives more importance to caring for people’s welfare.

Congrats😉

1 Like
11

same experience as a few others. repairs were happening fine for the last few hours and suddenly they went to hell again. right now, my theater has been condemned due to lack of repairs but i am watching them repair the building and every time they meet the required items shown when hovering over the repair meter, new items appear after. just lost half my population due to loss in desirability. :rage:

12

Cheers.

It just doesn’t make sense to me that a citizen would go: “My house is no longer in a desirable area! I am going to go freeze and die on the street instead!”

:smiley:

1 Like
13

Thank you Zantai. I look forward to playing the V0.7.5f changes when they roll out.

14

the playtest version seems to have corrected the repair issue i was experiencing, thanks! i will keep an eye out for other issues and post any findings in that section of the forum.

15

after 20 minutes of play (working)

Buildings did improve upon loading the saved game. There are still a few in need of repairs, and a few more popped up, we will see how they progress.

I did have 10 houses go abandon upon loading the game, those I am not sure what changed the desirability.

Upon loading almost every single house claimed to have rats.

Will update when I get more time in

1 Like
16

was playing the 0.75d… the tier 1 and early part of tier 2 the builders were auto repairing the buildings need to b repaired…later it stop functioning anymore and render those condemned…

now i noticed a bug in gold tax system where the calculation has stopped…i got ZERO gold income even in the system indicate that i should get 55 golds per year…

17

I ended one iteration of the game when multiple failures of vital structures led to homelessness and either out-migration or death of citizens. It becomes a totally untenable situation.

How about another alternative? Those who become homeless want to save their homes and get back in 'em, so they immediately go to work repairing their homes. A thought.

18

Hi @Zantai I have played v0.7.5f for a few hours and can confirm that the issue seems completely resolved. Thank you very much for such a prompt resolution. I am hoping that other people who have become frustrated with this issue read this.

Cheers.

19

I have no idea why they think this is resolved, it’s certainly not on my long established save so maybe only on new builds. For me, this is worse than ever lately… I’ve virtually lost my enthusiasm for this game thanks to the mass condemned bug and the features you point out here; frankly it’s just not pleasurable any longer until so many things are fixed, but this is one of the worst aspects which has ruined so much of my gameplay… I like a challenge but pointless frustration when things make no sense at all is another thing altogether… you make some great points lets hope someone finds a way to make these changes stick for those who have built up large cities and not just new saves.

20

How long established? When did you make the town?