Let’s talk about it. I can see a few basic possibilities for placing a workshop.
- All-in-one You place the entire workshop in one go. Pieces of the workshop like the work bench and tool cabinet are always in the same place.
- Designation You designate an area as “the workshop” and can freeform place workshop pieces within the designation.
- Freeform You just build workshop pieces and put them wherever you like.
They system we have now is the “All in one” system, because it’s simple and solves all of the problems below. Here are the core requirements of the workshop system.
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Easy to learn A new player should never ever get stuck when building their first workshop, because really you can barely do anything in the game without a carpenter! So it must be simple to get that first workshop up and running.
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Apparent in the world As much as possible we want the player to be able to tell what’s going on by looking at what’s happening on the screen, not by looking in some UI screen. So if I have a carpenter and a blacksmith, their workshops should be pretty obvious on the screen.
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Movable Workshops This is the tricky one. Workshops need to be easily relocated, even by novice players. If workshops are not easily movable you will quickly paint yourself into a corner, where you are more and more restricted in your city planning because of the immovable workshops dotting the landscape. This can potentially smack new players right in the face.
I hope you’re beginning to see why we’ve designed workshops this way now, but hey, we’re open to suggestions.