Zones to determine functions for areas

[Finson]

This is just a practical issue. They do this in Dwarf Fortress: You basically dig out/build a room, and if you want to make it, say, a hospital or a town meeting area or a stable for your animals, you designate that area as the proper zone. If this was done in Kenshi, it would make it so you wouldn't have to select to build a hospital, you just need to put some beds and equipment in a room and designate it as your hospital. And you could have customizable zones with customizable functions. This would make it possible to make improvised facilities in a pinch, and it would make it easier for the game to make the buildings more customizable as well, since you wouldn't have to use a predesignated "hospital" building.

This of course works for barracks, personal bedrooms, storage areas, town "safe rooms" for assaults on your town, etc., etc. What do you think?

[Santaissick]

At the moment it really is something like that. For example, shops are just normal buildings with some interior in them. After you add the "shop" sign on them, the shop keeper will spawn and the building turns into a shop.

Of course, player is still unable to start a business at this stage of development, but I think the same sign-based system should be preserved for the finished game as well.

[Finson]

True. Seems less flexible to me though. No outdoor zones (like pastures for animals or something), and no customizable functions. Works fine for shops, but I wonder if it'll work for a lot of other things. I think both the sign system and the zones could easily coexist though, since the signs are a simpler way of handling it. You could do zones for more advanced things.

It's just... like, ok, so you've got your barracks, but, HOLY CRAP! My hospital's been destroyed or is overcrowded or whatever, then you can designate a hospital zone inside your barracks zone, then give priority to one or the other, so that you can use the extra beds to help sick folks. Or... SHIT! A plague! We can't use the hospital and have it spread, so we need to set up some plague tents or something for them to be treated in. Zones, bruh. Zones.

That's a more advanced hypothetical situation that kind of makes it sound complicated, but it would actually be very simple, and it could be useful in general for designating mining areas, pens for animals, and for areas where you might, say, want your townsfolk to run during a raid on your settlement, a place where you might not want a sign advertising its function. I just think that this, or something similar to this, would give the kind of open-ended flexibility that Kenshi is going for, without being super complicated.

[Blxz]

a place where you might not want a sign advertising its function.

Kind of a moot point in a single player game.

[iSuck345]

Finson, I agree with you. Even though I have not played dwarf fortress and it is unlikely I play it without a texture mod, it's a good game to be based off... in some parts.

[Finson]

Kind of a moot point in a single player game.

Eh, yeah, I almost didn't put it, but I felt like I had momentum so I went ahead. Still though, it would sorta bug me if there was a "village hideout" sign.

[Hellhound1]

Just IMO, the only reason zones work in Dwarf Fortress is because there's no GUI.
The multiple versions of DF that do have GUIs and zones, they just look kinda silly. The reason it works in DF is because you have to use your imagination as to what the zones actually are. In some respects it's stupid - like food store zones. That just food thrown on the ground

[Blxz]

That just food thrown on the ground

Thats what warehouses are. It also explains how people can catch diseases from rat urine by drinking straight from the can of softdrink (or pop or soda or whatever your country calls it). Obviously the warehouse designer didn't have enough of a catsplosion to deal with those pesky vermin.

[iSuck345]

Then I guess we all agree, now let's wait for Marcuss. Now I am going to Dwarf Fortress to laugh at fails and the hilarious ways to loose.