I am always an advocate for mental health and work/life balance. I also REALLY enjoy a beautiful city. Sadly, I am reluctant to decorate as I will often find my building materials and mineral supplies dwindling as I watch my miners and woodsmen gardening and dancing or sitting around on benches. I would ask that the idle time (sitting on benches, gardening, dancing, idling in parks, chatting with neighbours, etc…) is reduced if there is work to be done. Especially when demand is high. Thank you!
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Thinking about it, a compromise for this would be to have a Policy that stopped those idle behaviour, but had the Happiness penalty that other Policies have.
Either that, or provide a bonus for those behaviours, while having workers in far out Mines do that stuff around their Temporary Shelters so they don’t run into town for that kind of stuff.
When workers go and drink Beer rather than work, they’re at least providing a functional bonus (generating gold, increasing happiness), and these idle behaviours could work similarly.
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Constructing more decorations where villagers will idle does not increase the time they spend doing it.
Villagers naturally spend some portion of their lives relaxing. Even if it means pondering existence. The game is balanced around this.
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Could you at least make it mechanically meaningful? Sure, it’s nice for some sandbox display settlement, but most of us actually play games to play games. This stuff is pointless and annoying from a gameplay perspective. That’s why I suggested the compromise of giving it some kind of mechanical benefit.
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Personally I like that they display leisure and personal activities. It adds life and character to the game. The villagers are human.
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Agreed. Maybe garden provide small amounts of herbs or food, temples, theatres, and shrines could provide a cumulative education bonus, all decorations should provide happiness, not just some.
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I agree, it adds realism to the game and I do enjoy it, but not at the expense of food and resources when I need them. Endlessly watching farmers wander off, miners dancing or sitting in parks when I need resources asap. Theres currently no way to prioritize production.
This is a min-maxer mindset. Not everyone plays games like this, especially this game. I love the fact that my villagers idle and enjoy the town decorations. It makes it feel like a real place.
If there should be a gameplay component to it then it should be that if villagers DON’T have sufficient idle time then they become depressed and less productive. People can’t be working 24/7 and the game is balanced to reflect this reality.
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The game is called ‘Final Frontier’, not ‘Leisure World’.
These are 1s and 0s, not flesh and blood.
The townsfolk need nothing Crate does not require of them.
There is ample time during the High Winter Seeking Shelter mass work-stoppage
for all these shenanigans and lollygagging, but nooo…
Imagine they follow your advice, remove idle behavior and make villagers work double the amount? Next they would make them work half as fast to restore balance. It doesn’t achieve anything other than remove a sense of life going on in the game.
Maybe someone can write a mod that replaces villagers with automatons for you
For most of the game’s existence they didn’t have this. Workers worked, we didn’t lose production, we enjoyed the game.
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All this lollygagging crap is NEW, Emvi.
I like that component! I would be happy to see that as an optional game mechanic. My issue is when it’s harvest season and my farmers aren’t farming, I get a bit annoyed when my crops die from rot and I watched them idle, or when I desperately need lumber and I have to grab people out of parks and off benches and manually send them to harvest wood. There’s no mechanic in the game to prioritize things the town desperately needs. I have no issue with idling when there is nothing for a farmer between crops or when clover is planted and just doing it’s thing. But when I have a big project going and all my labourers are wasting time instead of moving resources or harvesting more wood. I’ve tried prioritizing the construction, but it is hit or miss with a happy and complacent village with many parks, gardens, a bar or two, some shrines, a temple, and a theatre.
I’m not saying idling should not happen. I’m simply asking for a work/idle mechanic that would limit idling during busy stretches and allow more when things are calm.
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Comrade General Celebrindan has spoken. Work will set you free! hahaha
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I’m not asking for idling to be removed. It really does make me happy to see the little people dancing, gardening, sitting listening to sermons from the priest. I just ask for a mechanic to regulate it at times. I know the new tech tree introduced policies, but I don’t think it’s fair to players who want production on hand during challenging times when resources are dwindling and workers have to be selected, moved, and hope they go do their assigned job. I agree with phoenixwind that if they are worked hard for too long, a happiness penalty should be applied. FF is going for realism, and I love that. But realistically, if a real world village is running out of food, it’s harvest season, and the farmers aren’t in the fields, that village would be in an uproar. I want to be able to prevent that situation.
There is a policy to work 20% faster at a happiness penalty and higher injury rate. I think that pretty much does what you want.
It just straight up flies in the face of the entire premise of this game
to have lately added this component as some kind of necessity,
when in fact it can and will only lead to the failure of individuals
and the colony as a whole.
Hungry people with the means to feed themselves rarely miss
the opportunity.
If this is going to be SOP, then the opening sequence starting
a new map needs a cheerier song and a new narrative.
Life ain’t that hard.
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Sort of. I would like something available in the early game though. It seems silly to me that a settlement cannot prioritize necessities at the most important times, and has to wait until becoming a developed town to start focusing priorities. I was thinking a “work vs leisure” priority slider. I would completely understand a happiness penalty to that, but I would rather an unhappy settlement than a starving one.
It is, the policy is available from the moment your town center is placed and the game starts. But I get it, you are into hustle culture, at least in the game
This is, without question, the dumbest thing I’ve ever read on this website.