Frostpunk: Stay warm with the power of child labor

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Frostpunk: Stay warm with the power of child labor

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

So I got this on sale just now and a) Jesus the mood is so good and b) I haven't played a city builder game in loving ages and everything is overwhelming. My main issue so far is the road UI: I want to try to build my roads with an eye towards eventual expansion but something with the radial shape is messing with my head.

I'm trying really hard to avoid spoilers or definitive guides but are there good general principles for overall city layout? I'm trying to create things like housing districts relatively close to the generator for heat but I don't want to just make a ton of roads off into nowhere that I won't end up using. My first day I made two roads to the coal deposits only to find I can't make coal mines yet, which was a bit of a letdown.

Also, I'm assuming that laws are largely paired together and that you can only pick one of each pair, and that can't be switched or repealed at any point? And are the branches coming off from laws coming off from the whole node or from each side of the binary choice? Ie if I pick between child labor or child homes can I then pick from any of the other laws stemming off that pick or am I essentially locking myself out of further choices?

# ¿ Nov 29, 2023 16:51

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 15:11

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Fantastic, thanks! Off to grind my citizens to a finely frozen paste

# ¿ Dec 1, 2023 00:30

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Kaal posted:

My only real tip for the new player is that they can use building footprints to plan out their roads and city design, then delete the footprints. That way you can create central avenues or standardized districts much easier.

Ooh. This I like, once I found out my workshop is slightly longer than everything else so far. Is there another way to create fake templates or do I just cancel a building before it gets started for a full refund?

# ¿ Dec 1, 2023 05:19

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

I can't say I expected to find Winterhome in a good situation, but uh, wow my hope cratered.

I probably should have gone with Faith, in retrospect, but I slowly got my hope to a level where people aren't on the way to leaving. I figure Faith is probably better at Hope boosting. Also, super glad I built child shelters in retrospect!

# ¿ Dec 4, 2023 00:55

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

ThomasPaine posted:

Yes, faith is usually better than order if you're thinking purely in gameplay terms. Faith generally increases hope while order decreases discontent. Discontent though tends to be the result of short term crises and is usually a lot easier to deal with than hope collapsing, which happens over a longer period but is much harder to fix. This can be quite a problem if you're going order especially if you don't want to go full police state.

Try out the winterhome scenario if you really want to see how bad it can get. That thing is brutal even on the normal difficulty. I think trying to do it on survivor mode would be torture.

Yeah I've never really had major discontent issues that I didn't create myself from spamming extended shifts and now that I've got automatons coming online that seems much less necessary. 24/7 steel production baby! And foremen making automatons better just seems funny to me. I think if i was on hard or had much fewer workers the productivity boosts Order seems like it brings might have more advantages, but as-is I've got a good labor force and have the production staff to crank out automatons while slowly upgrading my housing.

That and soup+moonshine for everyone has basically solved my food and discontent issues. And some fighting. It's weird to me that fighting pits don't cause some injuries as a "lighter" version of dueling, which can cause deaths.

I'm trying not to build the propaganda center if I can help it but right now I don't see any other ways to really raise Hope. Everyone is living under a guard post, I'm spamming Patrols on cooldown, and trying to build up as much food and coal storage as I can, but at most the Londoners gauge shows that nobody else is joining. I might have to bite the bullet and get that propaganda center unless there is another way.

I haven't picked between cemeteries or snow pile disposal yet, mostly because I haven't had anyone except a scout team die, but a "minor" Hope boost from cemeteries doesn't seem like it'll be enough.

Come on guys, you're living in a fully automated frozen luxury bunkhouse. That's pretty cool.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2023 16:08

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Dumb question: I have several infirmaries, many of them empty, yet I still have patients sitting in my Care House. I thought the Care House was supposed to hold them until they can be treated in Infirmaries, so why are they there and how can I force them into my Infirmary to get better (and back to work)?

# ¿ Dec 10, 2023 16:44

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Yeah no idea they ended up eventually moving to the infirmary and getting care.

I beat A New Home! gently caress, that was nerve-wracking even with something like 20 days of food and I ended up with a positive coal income even with all of my steam hubs and generator going all out. An industrialized base of 20 automatons staffing 2 fully upgraded coal thumpers and associated 8 gathering posts as well as one t2 and one t3 wall drill and two charcoal kilns can more than make up for the max draw on your resources. If i could have raised the power on the generator I easily could have at least two or three more tiers but as it was I was pulsing Overdrive to keep everyone going.

I probably should have had another infirmary but nobody died during the storm! And I used most of the available space on the map.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2023 01:23

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

ThomasPaine posted:

20 automatons is frankly insane for your first game but well done.

It's well worth playing the other scenarios - A New Home is pretty much the tutorial. Seedling Arks and Refugees don't add any new mechanics, just act as different challenges to the base game, so are probably a good place to start. The rest mix up the formula to varying extents.

A few thoughts to help you decide which to start with (spoilered in case you want to go in fully blind, but nothing major):

Seedling arks: You start with only a handful of engineers and have to create an automated city with automatons while preventing the ark buildings from freezing. Complications happen. It's fun, especially if you already like automatons, and it's pretty satisfying developing your clockwork city that barely needs heat across 80% of it. The plot is pretty standard stuff but involves a neat choice and, if you're good enough, the opportunity to reject it. Probably the easiest scenario, though, imo.

Refugees: You start with barely anyone and have to just about get things set up, then wave after wave of new arrivals puts insane pressure on your food, healthcare, and housing. Quite challenging especially the first time round. Plot is fun and will make you a Stalinist

Fall of Winterhome: Lol, good luck. You saw what happened to Winterhome. You're in charge of it in the weeks leading up to that. You start after a riot that burned half the city down, leaving a bunch of it in ruins. Your predecessor was a clown who designed the city in the most rear end backward way. You're not making enough food to feed half your population, most of them are housed in unheated tents, and you have about one medical post. Things only get worse. Bleak plot, and by far the hardest scenario by a very large margin. Can be frustrating but definitely worth playing. I literally do not understand how this is even possible on survivor mode

Last autumn: Completely different mechanics to the base game. It doesn't even get cold for like 75% of the scenario. You're building the generator to a strict deadline and dealing with health and safety issues/labour disputes! Way more fun than it sounds, especially if you abandon any effort to stay sane and fully explore the top end of the tree of laws. My only criticism was that certain events fire on set milestones and can require you to meet certain conditions to avoid disaster, which can feel unfair your first time round (though very easy to plan for on subsequent attempts). Probably my favourite scenario. Can be a little frustrating but the new mechanics are refreshing and the tone is just 10/10.

On the edge: No generator for you. Interesting initial idea, being an outpost team, and it's fun trying to adapt to relying on braziers and heaters. Plot is very meh, imho, and doesn't really do anything interesting (seriously go watch the trailer for this when you're done and compare it to the actual game, lol). There are a few additional mechanics like supply lines and settlement diplomacy which are kinda cool but feel unnecessary, underdeveloped, and a bit tacked on. A little disappointing overall.

Cool, these were fun. The difficulty of the scenarios varies so wildly. The arks I won on hard (though didn't manage to save New Whatsit) without much trouble but I got kicked out of the Refugees within about 15 days on hard. I guess if I do Fall of Winterhome I'm definitely trying to do it on default difficulties!

# ¿ Dec 17, 2023 04:37

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Fister Roboto posted:

Beating Winterhome on Extreme Survivor is one of the toughest challenges I've ever done.

Jesus. I can't imagine. I just failed to save New London in On the Edge on hard, mostly because I think I took too long trying to get a new food source and a ton of my people starved early on which got me behind. I never really was able to stockpile any food, either, probably because of that earlier miss.

It's an interesting idea that just feels a little underbaked.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2023 10:25

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Acute Grill posted:

Yeah, even on lower difficulties you want to beeline food for On the Edge.

I like it a lot more than the rest of this thread seems to, but I have a lot of forgiveness for jank so long as it's ambitious jank.

This absolutely describes how I feel about most games. I re-did it and it was fairly easy to get all the settlements loyal and two out of three fully upgraded on a repeat (on hard) though I did still have a few people starve before enough food came through. The biggest thing was just the foreknowledge that New London is going to gently caress you and better ability to manipulate the laws. The first time through I worked hard enough to make the quota that I didn't get extended shifts until I broke free from them and I had no steel/cores/workers compared to the prior. It's a bit of a shame how important that advance knowledge (and avoiding accidentally grabbing other survivors early) is to long terms success.

Other times in this game I don't feel like there are major "traps".

# ¿ Dec 21, 2023 02:03

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Last Autumn was so much fun.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2024 23:51

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 15:11

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Cassian of Imola posted:

calm down bud 11bit studios isn't ron desantis

But what I imagine they said lines up so well with my prior beliefs!

# ¿ Apr 21, 2024 14:27

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Frostpunk: Stay warm with the power of child labor