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 We roam the still, cold world. No horizon in sight.  The rulers-of-old. Stripped of pride and glory.   It feels as yesterday, we were turning the wheels of progress.  Until the frost... stopped it all.  Suddenly. Without a warning.  When tides had changed... they changed for all of us...  ...no matter wealth or class.   We have lost our world to snow and with it, our last traces...  ...of humanity.    We bid farewell to plenty. And for those who remained, came the time to adapt.  We decided to leave our homes and head north.  We roamed for weeks... Maybe months...  Leaving behind all the things we once believed had made us.  It was hope...  ...that pushed us forward.  Slowly. Step by step.  We knew the cost of our journey.  And we've paid the price.  A hundred times.  Finally... the time has come.   To build the last city on earth.  Our introductory video finishes with a lingering shot on the Generator from above as it roars to life. Welcome to Frostpunk, a game from 11 Bit Studios about climate change, societal collapse, and the choices we must make to survive and rebuild. It is a game of managing resources and building a city to preserve, and perhaps one day rebuild, civilization. There are several scenarios to play (four, plus two from DLC, as well as an unlockable Endless mode) and in this LP I hope to eventually bring you through each of them. The first is called A New Home, which essentially functions as our main story.  We fled from London and crossed the sea to reach the frozen north. On the way our convoy was hit by a blizzard and scattered. A handful of us managed to reach the site of this Generator, only to find it frozen solid and abandoned. Why is no one here? Did any of our people survive the blizzard? Are there any others out there? Whatever we do, we should expect the worst now that the world as know it has crumbled. It is 1887, and the world is freezing. Nobody is entirely sure why, but the evidence is undeniable. Even our most advanced steam computational engines, descendants of the Difference Engine built by Charles Babbage over six decades ago, are unable to account for the magnitude of the global cooling, nor its unnatural speed. The Great Frost started in the summer of 1886, and the decimation of crops and strange weather phenomena caused massive societal upheaval all over the world. As London was deemed a lost cause, the British Empire commissioned a number of coal-powered steam Generators to be built in the resource-rich north, with the idea that half the residents of the Isles would be evacuated north, and the rest to the colonies in the southern hemisphere. Unfortunately, contact was lost with the colonies and all who went south, swallowed by a great ice storm. We are, as far as we know, the only expedition to have made it to our Generator site. It falls on us to ensure the survival of the human race.  We need to get the Generator working. It provides heat and power to other buildings. Without it we'll freeze to death. Stockpile some Coal and start the Generator.  And with that, we are taken to the game proper. We can see that at the bottom left of the screen we have our first quest, Fight the Cold, which is to stockpile 200 units of Coal and turn the Generator on (in either order). The Generator lies at the literal and figurative heart of our city, pumping steam through pipes wherever we need it to keep things running and warm. At the top of the screen we can see our current resources, or lack thereof; from left to right we can see that we have no Coal, 30 Wood, 10 Steel and 1 Steam Core stockpiled, as well as 100 Raw Food and no prepared Food Rations. We can also see from the top banner that it is currently 8:02 on Day 1, it is -20 degrees Celsius, and we are expecting the temperature to drop by another two levels to -40C on Day 4. In the center of the screen is the Generator itself, with piles of coal, wood and steel scattered about in all directions. Attached to the Generator is the shed housing our Stockpiles, a free building that you start every game with and that you cannot move or destroy. All buildings will be attached to the generator like this one, building in concentric circles outward. You can't really see it from this screenshot, but we are located at the bottom of a circular crater, somewhat protected from the elements on all sides, and there are some frozen trees around the circumference. We've got some work to do.  Clicking on the temperature shows the temperature overlay, from which we can see that this entire area is currently considered chilly. Those orange dots are our people, who are currently huddled around the inactive Generator; once we turn that on, it will raise the heat level to liveable in a small radius around it. The colder people get, the more likely they are to fall ill. Speaking of people, let's take a look at them.  At the bottom right of the screen we can see that everyone in the city is currently unemployed, but this will change as soon as I start setting them to gathering the resources scattered all about. There are currently fifty unskilled Workers and fifteen Engineers awaiting work orders, as well as fifteen Children who cannot work. At the bottom center of the screen, we can see the bright red alert that all 80 citizens are also currently unhoused.  Here we can see the names of some of our citizens. I'm not going to be going out of my way to show off every single one of them because frankly, the game doesn't do a good job at making you care about the individual members of your society except as another pair of working hands. Maybe that's intentional, getting you to see them as numbers instead of people; I'm not quite sure.  All this information is available if you want it, though. We could also rename this kid; if anyone wants anybody named after them, feel free to ask, though I probably won't follow your individual story beyond noting if you live or die. At the bottom of the screen we can see our Discontent and Hope gauges, which we want to keep low and high respectively; if people do start dropping, it's going to be hard to keep those meters from filling up or emptying, which will trigger a game over not long after. We will need to keep in mind our residents' psychological needs in addition to their physical ones.  To the left of the Discontent/Hope meters is the button that opens our Building menu. This will fill out over time; right now our only option under "People" is these tents, which cost ten wood to build and provide +10 degrees worth of heat and shelter for ten residents.  If people spend too much time out in the cold they will fall ill, at which point they will need to spend time in a medical post to recover. In extreme cases they will become gravely ill, or even require amputations due to frostbite; our current facilities are not properly equipped to care for people in these states.   We currently have a hundred units of raw food stored. People won't eat raw food until they start starving, and while it will satisfy their hunger, they will have a good chance of getting sick from it. Cookhouses turn two units of raw food into four edible food rations, while the hunter's hut lets us bring in fifteen raw foodstuffs every night.   Under the "Resources" tab we can see the first building that we don't have the materials to build right away, the resource depot. Fortunately we won't need to build those for a while yet, as we have far more than enough capacity for the meager supplies we've brought with us. The gathering post will allow workers to collect all resources in a small radius at once, rather than picking through piles one at a time; this will go a long way towards hitting those stockpile caps.  Finally, the workshop. We are not going to survive the changing climate without a ton of research. I will keep in mind the thread's suggestions if you all have any thoughts as to which direction to take our research, but I will largely be making those decisions on my own. Let's look at the Economy menu next.       As you can see, these are the detailed breakdowns for each resource, as well as our medical and housing information. I won't spend too much time boring you with these screens. Finally, let's take a look at the Laws screen.   The Book of Laws currently has only one domain, Adaptation. Currently we can choose to sign one of ten laws, eight of which are mutually exclusive with another, and most of which lead to more options later on. Signing any of these will prevent us from choosing another for 18 hours, though later laws may have cooldown periods that are double or triple that. And when I say "us," I mean us - the laws we sign are going to define who we are as a people. Once signed, a law can never be revoked. Although I am the Captain of our expedition and responsible for everybody's immediate survival, we have an unprecedented chance to break away from the mistakes of the Old World. Our new civilization will be democratically shaped by everybody in this thread, every update ending with a vote. Here are the available options:  Emergency Shift will allow us to force a job site to work for 24 hours straight, with a cooldown of two days and a discontent penalty. Signing it will also immediately raise discontent. This leads to the Extended Shift law.   Child Labour - Safe Jobs will allow us to put our children to work in certain areas, such as gathering and cooking, and will lower hope if we sign it. This leads to Child Labour - All Jobs, and is mutually exclusive with Child Shelters, which will raise our hope if we build somewhere for our children to stay during the work day. This one leads to Medic Apprentices/Engineer Apprentices.   Cemetary and Corpse Disposal provide two different ways of disposing of dead bodies. The former will raise hope, but proper burials take time; this leads to Ceremonial Funerals. The latter lowers hope and raises discontent, but we won't have to take the time for a burial; it leads to Organic Fertiliser.   Radical Treatment and Sustain Life concern our treatment of those who fall gravely ill, beyond the capacity of our medical posts to treat. Radical Treatment allows medical posts to treat them with a chance of leaving them as amputees who cannot work. With Sustain Life our medics will not attempt to treat the gravely ill, leaving them to take up sickbeds. Both options raise discontent, and both lead to Care House and Extra Rations for the Ill/Overcrowding.   The next two both let us stretch our raw food further - Soup turns two raw food into five rations, while Food Additives turns two into six but has a chance of leaving the consumer ill. Both options will lower hope and raise discontent, and neither leads to any further choices.  Finally we can allow a Fighting Arena to be built, which will reduce discontent for everybody living within a certain radius of the pit every night. This unlocks Duelling Law and Public House. And with that, I leave it up to you, the people: What will be the first Law we enact to ensure our survival and define our future?
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May 2, 2023 05:45
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 20:46 |
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Book of Laws  Adaptation The first set of Laws that is available in almost every scenario, representing the changes a society needs to make to survive in new and hostile conditions. The Emergency Shift line extends the hours of the working day, either by forcing a temporary 24-hour shift or by instituting a more permanent (but reversible) 14-hour shift at a given workplace. These technologies are invaluable in the early game when labour and resources are both in short supply. The Child Shelters and Child Labour lines are mutually exclusive. If you decide to put your children to work you will end up with far more working hands, but putting them in shelters eventually allows them to apprentice at workshops or medical facilities. The Cemetary and Corpse Disposal choices both deal with the disposal of our dead. Burying dead bodies precludes... other uses for them. The Radical Treatment and Sustain Life laws don't lead to different branches like the other mutually exclusive choices, but instead down a tree of healthcare-related laws which includes several other binary choices like this. The Soup and Food Additives laws are a mutually exclusive choice on how to stretch raw food further, which does not initially lead to any further options. The Fighting Arena tree leads to several options which lower discontent with bread and circuses.   Order One of the two mutually exclusive Purpose Law sets. These represent the changes a society must make to keep its people productive, motivated, and disciplined. Signing Pledge of Loyalty and Forceful Persuasion unlocks New Order, which will permanently replace the Hope bar with Obedience. By the time you've done this it's already too late - you will have already crossed the line. Faith Coming soon? Technology Tree  Heating These technologies pertain to keeping your populace warm and are largely upgrades to the Generator itself. The Generator Power Upgrade line, along with Heaters and Overdrive, are the main way to keep ahead of the ever-dropping temperature. Steam Hubs are a superior option in every way for extending the Generator's influence compared to Generator Range Upgrade.  Exploration & Industry These technologies are related to the Beacon, scouts, and outposts, as well as automatons and prosthetics. Get as many scouts and outpost teams as possible out as early as you can. Later in the game, as automatons take over most of your workplaces, the Automaton Integration line will ensure that they are far superior to human workers.  Resources These technologies, of course, pertain to resource gathering and management. Faster Gathering is a good early tech to grab when you're still collecting resource piles. After that there are multiple ways to continue your coal and wood incomes, but only one way to increase steel production. Coal Mines and Wall Drills are superior to Coal Thumpers and Sawmills, but require steam cores; if you can get your hands on those, go for the former (though there's no reason you can't do both at once).  Food, Health & Shelter These technologies relate to keeping people fed, healthy, and housed. There are also a few upgrades to the insulation of various buildings. You'll need to continually upgrade your Hunter's Huts over the course of the game in order to meet the needs of your growing population. You'll also need to upgrade their housing as temperatures drop, and healthcare will help if you keep them cold for too long. Everything here is eventually essential. Relic Archives Coming soon? Remalle fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Jun 13, 2023 |
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May 2, 2023 05:50
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Emergency Shift is your greatest friend in these dark days. Storywise: Holy poo poo guys, we're gonna freeze to death if we don't get our poo poo together right the gently caress now, we can sleep later. (rework phrasing for sufficient level of british) Mechanics: Emergency shifts on wood piles and gathering posts early on really help you get a good early start. Once you've got the basic "do not die" things set up, alternating emergency shifts on a pair of workshops more than doubles your research rate in comparison to having 3 workshops working normally while having a manageable rate of unrest generation. Also, 1 engineer will die from the second time you emergency shift a workshop, but you won't get any more deaths from it. my dad fucked around with this message at 06:57 on May 2, 2023 |
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May 2, 2023 06:53
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Emergency Shift, to get things done proper. No rest for the freezing.
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May 2, 2023 08:12
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Child Labor Beeline fore engineers. Our little urchins are going to be good for something.
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May 2, 2023 08:54
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habituallyred posted:Child Labor Beeline fore engineers. Our little urchins are going to be good for something. If you want Child Engineers you need Shelters, and not Labor, I think. Anyway, Emergency Shifts
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May 2, 2023 09:31
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Child shelters Child labor got us in to this mess, no way is it getting us out of it Edit: For Child engineers you absolutely need shelters. Labour leads to Children work all jobs. Even the dangerous ones. double edit: I feel like the meta choice is either emergency shifts or child labour. Either gets you extra labour, which you REALLY need early game. But what's an LP without making the player suffer? Veloxyll fucked around with this message at 10:59 on May 2, 2023 |
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May 2, 2023 10:50
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Child Labor, you are, after all, still British.
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May 2, 2023 15:41
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my dad posted:Storywise: Holy poo poo guys, we're gonna freeze to death if we don't get our poo poo together right the gently caress now, we can sleep later. (rework phrasing for sufficient level of british) "bit chilly, innit" Emergency Shift.
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May 2, 2023 18:37
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I love this game! I play it every year when winter comes, it is amazing when it comes to immersion, especially in later game. Also I was always wondering, and it is a good chance to finally ask - what is the lowest temperature human being can survive? During endgame we can reach some absolutely ridiculous temperatures, way below lowest temperature recorded IRL I believe that during final storm it reaches -120 or -150 Celsius Also music in this game loving slaps, including trailer music. I vote Extended Shifts
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May 2, 2023 19:45
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In these dark times it's important we come together and start beating the poo poo out of each other in the Arena, for some reason
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May 2, 2023 22:07
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Veloxyll posted:Child shelters Child labor got us in to this mess, no way is it getting us out of it
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May 2, 2023 22:18
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Child Shelters
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May 2, 2023 22:29
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Child Shelters then the Pub
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May 2, 2023 23:00
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Emergency Shifts
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May 2, 2023 23:24
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So far the polls are showing: Emergency Shift 5 (I'm counting Szarrukin's vote for Extended Shifts here, as we haven't unlocked that one yet) Child Shelters 4 Child Labor 2 Arena 1 Still time to make a push! I'm going to let voting continue for another day. And as Szarrukin said, the music in this game does, in fact, slap - have a listen to the main theme, composed by Piotr Musiał. Remalle fucked around with this message at 03:42 on May 3, 2023 |
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May 2, 2023 23:33
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Emergency shifts and then Child Shelters.
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May 2, 2023 23:34
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Look, do you guys want to throw children into that generator, do you want to work people to death, or do you want to go a few rounds shirtless in *checks notes* -4 Fahrenheit weather You can't even build a pub until you do it! What kind of Englishmen don't have a pub?
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May 3, 2023 03:19
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RBA Starblade posted:What kind of Englishmen don't have a pub? The kind who have a mate with a still on his allotment.
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May 3, 2023 09:36
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You could also have a pub that also does bloodsport, now that you can't do knifecrime in the parking lot, you should be able to do it indoors.
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May 3, 2023 09:53
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I vote for Emergency Shifts. Child Labor and Corpse Disposal can come later, for now we need all the resources we can get.
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May 3, 2023 15:49
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Emergency Shifts because this is something of an emergency. Also I volunteer to be a random engineer lady, if we have one.
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May 3, 2023 17:51
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Emergency Shifts to increase responsiveness to problems or bottlenecks in resources.
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May 3, 2023 18:46
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emergency shifts does sound pretty important right now
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May 3, 2023 19:42
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With the vote split on the child labour issue I'm gonna call the vote here for Emergency Shift. Next one should be interesting!
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May 4, 2023 00:18
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Emergency shifts are great early game, particularly for getting your infrastructure up and running. Your early bottleneck is going to be resources once you hit a point before you've gotten your After that I tend to go for fighting arena just as a simple way to deal with discontent. Oh well too late to vote! Still fun!
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May 4, 2023 02:32
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Captain's Log, Day One We have arrived, 80 in number, to this Generator Site which is to be our new home. For lack of any other name some of the wags took to calling this place "The Pit" on account of its shape and the grim mood which has already settled over our snow-blighted settlement. To head off listlessness and ensure we will have enough materials to build this city, I assigned every single person over the age of 13 to collecting the resources which the work crews who prepared this site for us left scattered all ovee.    Even the skilled and educated were made to chip in as manual labourers. Work crews of fifteen were assigned to each pile, leaving five stragglers, who were assigned to another wood pile on the other side of the Pit. Wood is more valuable than gold right now; we do not even have anywhere to sleep yet.   A vote was held as soon as we arrived and it was decided that although we will keep regular working hours from 0800 to 1800, a shift can be extended to 24 hours in emergency situations. This caused a small amount of discontent and grumbling from those who see this as no different from the conditions they endured in the factories of London.   The children amused themselves for a time watching the adults make trails through the snow en route to their assigned work places.   In just a scarce few hours we collected enough wood to ensure everybody would have a tent to sleep in this first night. The actual construction will not begin until after working hours; I considered reassigning some of the gatherers to construction immediately, but ultimately decided the continued collection effort is more important.  To that end we institute our first emergency shift. The workers here will gather wood through the night, a reality which caused as much discontent as the law did when it was initially signed.  At 1700 I give the order to start the Generator. According to the engineers it will take nearly an hour to reach full heat, at which point regular working hours will have ended. With any luck, the Generator will continue to give us heat for as long as it takes for this blasted weather to rise back above -20.   It doesn't take long for us to feel the beast warming up. The engineers assure me that given time and examination of its complex workings they can coax even more power and range out of it.  At 1800 all but those working the emergency shift are recalled. As there is not yet anywhere for anybody to lay their head this is not an end to the working day, but merely the beginning of a construction effort which will likely last through the night.  The resources we collected over the day are enough that I can also order the construction of a cookhouse and several gathering posts, which will ensure we have something to eat tomorrow and greatly speed up our collection efforts. Each of these will be connected to our central plaza, the area surrounding the Generator itself, by a road which will convey foot traffic and steam alike.  A few of the tents are complete. I order the workers to focus on housing first tonight - every one of us will have a roof over our head tonight!  Enough wood is gathered that a somewhat larger medical tent can be built. Though nobody has fallen ill yet, with the conditions we have been out working in all day it is only a matter of time.   Sure enough, young Nicholas Leventhorpe checks in complaining of a sore throat and runny nose not long after it is built. Up to five engineers can be assigned to medical duty - not long after Nicholas another patient checks in, so we may need all five of them sooner rather than later!   In happier news the tents have all been pitched, and the builders complete the cookhouse and a gathering post not too long after. Rather than assigning fifteen people to a single pile, we can now have ten people gathering from multiple piles at once! Though our stomachs are growling tonight, many are going to sleep tonight with a smile on their face, looking forward to the meals that will be cooked first thing in the morning.  Things are progressing apace. I have just been informed that we are ready to sign another law. We have all the same options as before, with one addition now that we have signed Emergency Shift:  Extended Shift will allow us to set the working hours at any workplace to fourteen hours, from 0600 to 2000. Signing this will of course raise discontent even more, to say nothing of actually doing it. What will our second Law be?
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May 4, 2023 07:09
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Fighting Arenas. It's the next best thing to a real pub and an English tradition!
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May 4, 2023 07:33
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Soup!
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May 4, 2023 07:51
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Yeah, Soup. It makes sense to stretch our food as long as it'll go.
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May 4, 2023 08:29
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Safe Child Labor I feel certain either law leads to apprenticeships.
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May 4, 2023 08:32
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I would advise prioritizing research buildings next if anyhow possible. Child shelters. It's a suboptimal choice to make this early, but I'd rather have that than child labor, and I'm afraid to vote for anything else until this is locked it.
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May 4, 2023 10:16
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Child Shelters is what leads to apprenticeships. Safe Child labor only leads to 'All jobs can be done by children'
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May 4, 2023 12:44
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Child Shelters so the Children can keep out of the way.
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May 4, 2023 13:34
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Child Labour So we can be Tough Men Making Tough Decisions, this will only have positive effects.
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May 4, 2023 14:01
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Child Shelters
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May 4, 2023 14:26
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NewMars posted:Fighting Arenas. It's the next best thing to a real pub and an English tradition! Are we saving civilization here or not fellas
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May 4, 2023 14:35
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Child Smelters
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May 4, 2023 14:46
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 20:46 |
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Soup I'm not too good at this game so I'm using a reddit post.
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May 4, 2023 15:45
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