Settlement management issue

[Psyspark]

I apologize if this topic is elsewhere and I missed it. I searched for a bit and came up with nothing so I decided to just ask before the frustration got to me.

Anyway, I just started playing the game and I can't for the life of me figure out how to access the settlement management. My civ level is 10, I've tried using the green hearth stone, looked at all the key bindings in the options menu. I've even gone so far as to press every single key on my keyboard independently to see if that would bring it up. I started another world, thinking that my first one may have been bugged or something and I couldn't open it in that one either. I know it says that you can access it from the covered bridge building in the settlement but it's nowhere to be found.

I know it's still beta so I was expecting these kinds of things to possibly appear but I just want to know if I'm completely missing something or if my game is bugged.

[Toll]

Settlement management is, for the time being, unavailable.

[x4000]

We haven't rewritten all the guides yet because stuff is still in flux, but the ideas behind settlement management are being expressed in a completely different way; more coming soon on that!

[Dizzard]

I hope we'll still be allowed to have some impact on our settlements though.

I need to name my settlements like a fish needs water.

[x4000]

Yep, you'll be able to name your settlements still, and we have various things planned for ways you can impact your NPCs and they can impact you.  The visual style of the overhead citybuilding-style mode is going away, though, as it was superflous and kind of ugly anyhow.

[Bluddy]

Yep, you'll be able to name your settlements still, and we have various things planned for ways you can impact your NPCs and they can impact you.  The visual style of the overhead citybuilding-style mode is going away, though, as it was superflous and kind of ugly anyhow.

Agreed. Or at the very least, it was a disconnect from the rest of the game. Much better to have some interface that's 2d so that you can see the effects of your actions in a view that's consistent with the rest of the game (assuming that's what you're going for).

[x4000]

Most of the stuff with buildings and so on is going away, actually.  It just felt too disconnected.  We may have some lists of buildings or something that is nonvisual, but at this point I doubt we'll even do that.

Instead, a lot of it is going to be focused on helping your NPCs themselves grow, and using them for strategic purposes through some new Guardian Powers that will be coming very soon.  And we're also going to be having it so that players can wield a lot more direct control over the world map in some ways, come to that; being able to place wind shelters wherever you want (but at some cost, so you want to make each one count), and some other things.

It's a narrowing of focus in some ways, trying to go deeper with what was working well about the game while at the same time keeping to the spirit of some of the disparate components that were previously in there.

[Bluddy]

Sounds great. Re: placing windshelters, an idea to consider is that aside from costing resources, wind shelters could only be placed a minimum distance from one another or perhaps there could be a maximum number per continent. You then have to decide which areas you want to cover. Missions might  spawn in areas you haven't defended, and then those missions will have the added difficult of the wind storms.

[x4000]

That's a good idea, with only being able to do them within a certain distance of your existing network -- that could work out very interestingly.

We're on the cusp of another really major shift in the game; a lot of stuff is going to be released probably tomorrow, and then we're going to be working on missions and guardian powers during next week.  By the end of next week, the goal is that we're back to a state where the game is a "closed loop" that is fun to play.  Ever since the power-coding stuff started, the game has been mechanically better, but also less fun in some other respects because the full cycle of gameplay wasn't there anymore.

[Toll]

I've really noticed the same thing, really. I've not played much at all lately, and my server has been all but deserted over the last few weeks. Hopefully the new additions will liven things up again!

[x4000]

Yeah, that's been a major source of stress for me in particular -- not really out of worry that the game wouldn't turn out right, because it's headed in the right direction.  But we had a game that was fun on some levels, and we destroyed that to make a much more fun game.  Only we still haven't finished making the "more fun game" yet.  My goal is to have that shored up by the end of next week, and actually even tomorrow's release should be some enormous strides toward that.