[FEATURE] Game systems overhaul: purpose, meaning & difficulty #48

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opened 2026-10-20 09:59:52 +02:00 by agent-claude · 1 comment

agent-claude commented

2026-10-20 09:59:52 +02:00

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Problem

A headless 30-day probe of a fresh colony (no player input) shows that the game systems lack stakes and purpose:

Combat is binary and unfair. The first raid (day 3, 2 scavengers) wipes the colony by day 4. Undrafted colonists never defend themselves, raiders execute downed pawns, and raiders never leave (16 loitering by day 30). Raid size never scales.
Survival has no consequences. Hunger at 0 does nothing, mood sits at ~85% forever (baseline 6500 + permanent +10% optimism), and mental breaks don't exist.
Biome/temperature are cosmetic. stepEnvironment overwrites the world tile's temperature with a fixed 9–21°C curve, so a tundra colony reports "Pleasant Weather". No seasons, no winter food pressure. Heaters and coolers are no-ops.
Progression is meaningless. Every completed action grants +1 skill level (cap 20 in 20 actions). Crafted weapons are never equipped. Multi-input recipes only consume their first input. Recipe tech gating isn't enforced. Mining yields infinite alloy from any rock.
Many buildings do nothing. Dining tables, chairs, spike traps, and heaters have no effect. Healroot is unused, and tending needs no medicine.

Plan (sim-core, data-driven, deterministic)

Seasons and climate: biome base temperature, 60-day year (15-day seasons), day/night swing, and cold snaps / heat waves. Crops stop growing in winter. Enclosed-room detection with working heaters, coolers, and campfires drives room temperature and food spoilage.
Exposure and starvation: hypothermia and heatstroke, starvation damage, and exhaustion collapse. Each can kill, and each is telegraphed by thoughts and alerts.
Mood that matters: baseline 50%, timed memories (ate at table, slept outdoors, colonist died, raid repelled), mood-scaled work speed, and mental breaks (daze, binge, tantrum) followed by catharsis.
Skills via XP: per-action XP with rising level costs. Skill level scales work speed and yields.
Medicine: tending consumes healroot when available, and tend quality depends on skill and medicine. Healing over time, faster in bed. Downed colonists get rescued to bed.
Fair, scaling raids: grace period, wealth- and day-scaled raid points, random map-edge entry, and colonists who auto-defend. Raiders spare the downed, steal loot and leave, and drop weapons on death. Spike traps work. Colonists equip better weapons from stock.
Storyteller incidents: wanderer joins (colony growth), cargo pods, crop blight, cold snap / heat wave.
Production fixes: all recipe inputs consumed, recipe tech gating, finite alloy from mining (skill-scaled chance).
Content rebalance (hunger rate, crop growth times) and client log badges for the new events.

## Problem A headless 30-day probe of a fresh colony (no player input) shows that the game systems lack stakes and purpose: - **Combat is binary and unfair.** The first raid (day 3, 2 scavengers) wipes the colony by day 4. Undrafted colonists never defend themselves, raiders execute downed pawns, and raiders never leave (16 loitering by day 30). Raid size never scales. - **Survival has no consequences.** Hunger at 0 does nothing, mood sits at ~85% forever (baseline 6500 + permanent +10% optimism), and mental breaks don't exist. - **Biome/temperature are cosmetic.** `stepEnvironment` overwrites the world tile's temperature with a fixed 9–21°C curve, so a tundra colony reports "Pleasant Weather". No seasons, no winter food pressure. Heaters and coolers are no-ops. - **Progression is meaningless.** Every completed action grants +1 skill level (cap 20 in 20 actions). Crafted weapons are never equipped. Multi-input recipes only consume their first input. Recipe tech gating isn't enforced. Mining yields infinite alloy from any rock. - **Many buildings do nothing.** Dining tables, chairs, spike traps, and heaters have no effect. Healroot is unused, and tending needs no medicine. ## Plan (sim-core, data-driven, deterministic) 1. **Seasons and climate**: biome base temperature, 60-day year (15-day seasons), day/night swing, and cold snaps / heat waves. Crops stop growing in winter. Enclosed-room detection with working heaters, coolers, and campfires drives room temperature and food spoilage. 2. **Exposure and starvation**: hypothermia and heatstroke, starvation damage, and exhaustion collapse. Each can kill, and each is telegraphed by thoughts and alerts. 3. **Mood that matters**: baseline 50%, timed memories (ate at table, slept outdoors, colonist died, raid repelled), mood-scaled work speed, and mental breaks (daze, binge, tantrum) followed by catharsis. 4. **Skills via XP**: per-action XP with rising level costs. Skill level scales work speed and yields. 5. **Medicine**: tending consumes healroot when available, and tend quality depends on skill and medicine. Healing over time, faster in bed. Downed colonists get rescued to bed. 6. **Fair, scaling raids**: grace period, wealth- and day-scaled raid points, random map-edge entry, and colonists who auto-defend. Raiders spare the downed, steal loot and leave, and drop weapons on death. Spike traps work. Colonists equip better weapons from stock. 7. **Storyteller incidents**: wanderer joins (colony growth), cargo pods, crop blight, cold snap / heat wave. 8. **Production fixes**: all recipe inputs consumed, recipe tech gating, finite alloy from mining (skill-scaled chance). 9. Content rebalance (hunger rate, crop growth times) and client log badges for the new events.

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2026-10-20 09:59:52 +02:00

agent-bot referenced this issue from a commit

2026-10-20 10:25:55 +02:00

feat(sim): game systems overhaul — survival stakes, seasons, mood, XP & fair raids (#48)

agent-claude referenced this issue from a pull request that will close it,

2026-10-20 10:26:15 +02:00

[PR] Game systems overhaul: survival stakes, seasons, mood, XP & fair raids #49

agent-claude added the

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2026-10-20 10:26:15 +02:00

agent-claude commented

2026-10-20 10:26:32 +02:00

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Handoff (agent-claude): PR #49 is ready for peer review

Completed

sim-core/src/survival.ts (new): pure helpers for the calendar and seasons, climate, room flood-fill, the skill XP curve and weapon ranking.
sim-core/src/colony-sim.ts:
- seasons, weather, rooms and climate
- exposure, starvation and exhaustion
- the mood and memory model, mental breaks
- XP and work multipliers
- medicine, clotting and rescue
- wealth-scaled raids, self-defence, equipping, looting and raid resolution
- storyteller incidents
- multi-input crafting, recipe tech gating and stock targets
- mining yields
types.ts and binary-codec.ts: new pawn and colony fields, all persisted. raidCooldownTicks is now persisted too; it previously reset to "never raid" after a server restart.
map-gen.ts: biome base temperature, a raid grace period, a starter campfire and medicine/combat skills. Also fixes the bench structureId bug.
content/: hunger 16 bp/tick, crops take about 3–5 days, healroot is now a medical item, recipe targetStock values.
client/src/main.ts: season and weather HUD, six skills with XP tooltips, exposure and malnutrition meters, log badges (BREAK, JOINED, LOOT, SKILL, SEASON, WEATHER, EVENT).
docs/GAME_DESIGN.md §6 documents every rule and number.

Remaining / next steps

Peer review by agent-gemini, then merge approval from @johnw.
Follow-up ideas:
- Clothing and apparel from cloth/cotton, to give cold biomes a gear answer beyond rooms.
- A UI for player-set recipe stock targets.
- Splitting colony-sim.ts (now about 5.7k lines) into modules.
- Tuning raid points after live playtesting.

Gotchas

Rooms are a derived, non-persisted cache. It is invalidated when buildings complete or are destroyed and when rock is mined. Any new code that changes walls or doors must call invalidateRooms().
Only TickDelta-replicated fields belong in computeStateHash. Otherwise the client-replica parity test fails.
protectedOffline disables all new threats. That covers raids, incidents, exposure, starvation, breaks and food alerts.
Existing production colonies pick up the new rules on load. They get a fresh 1200-tick raid grace period and biome base temperature 15°C, because older snapshots have no biome temperature stored.

## Handoff (agent-claude): PR #49 is ready for peer review **Completed** - `sim-core/src/survival.ts` (new): pure helpers for the calendar and seasons, climate, room flood-fill, the skill XP curve and weapon ranking. - `sim-core/src/colony-sim.ts`: - seasons, weather, rooms and climate - exposure, starvation and exhaustion - the mood and memory model, mental breaks - XP and work multipliers - medicine, clotting and rescue - wealth-scaled raids, self-defence, equipping, looting and raid resolution - storyteller incidents - multi-input crafting, recipe tech gating and stock targets - mining yields - `types.ts` and `binary-codec.ts`: new pawn and colony fields, all persisted. `raidCooldownTicks` is now persisted too; it previously reset to "never raid" after a server restart. - `map-gen.ts`: biome base temperature, a raid grace period, a starter campfire and medicine/combat skills. Also fixes the bench `structureId` bug. - `content/`: hunger 16 bp/tick, crops take about 3–5 days, healroot is now a medical item, recipe `targetStock` values. - `client/src/main.ts`: season and weather HUD, six skills with XP tooltips, exposure and malnutrition meters, log badges (BREAK, JOINED, LOOT, SKILL, SEASON, WEATHER, EVENT). - `docs/GAME_DESIGN.md` §6 documents every rule and number. **Remaining / next steps** - Peer review by agent-gemini, then merge approval from @johnw. - Follow-up ideas: - Clothing and apparel from cloth/cotton, to give cold biomes a gear answer beyond rooms. - A UI for player-set recipe stock targets. - Splitting `colony-sim.ts` (now about 5.7k lines) into modules. - Tuning raid points after live playtesting. **Gotchas** - **Rooms are a derived, non-persisted cache.** It is invalidated when buildings complete or are destroyed and when rock is mined. Any new code that changes walls or doors must call `invalidateRooms()`. - **Only TickDelta-replicated fields belong in `computeStateHash`.** Otherwise the client-replica parity test fails. - **`protectedOffline` disables all new threats.** That covers raids, incidents, exposure, starvation, breaks and food alerts. - **Existing production colonies** pick up the new rules on load. They get a fresh 1200-tick raid grace period and biome base temperature 15°C, because older snapshots have no biome temperature stored.

agent-claude referenced this issue

2026-10-20 10:42:05 +02:00

[FEATURE] Apparel: insulated parka & duster for cold/hot biomes #50