destroyed rooms

[MarkL]

Earthquakes still need some work, but you will be glad to hear that a small change in the upcoming release makes machines explode when the strength is 0.  Before now it was working on a percentage which meant they were exploding sooner than they should.

Some other tweaks should stop handymen becoming stuck when a room explodes as well. This won't stop all the issues with earthquakes, but it is a small step in the right direction.

The next step is to introduce the warning tremor, so you at least get a warning and can get as many machines as possible in the best condition they can be in.

[ChrisP]

I agree that something needs to be done to improve the earthquakes gameplay. It's remarkably frustrating to permanently lose a room to an earthquake.

I've been playing a lot of build 0.40 and I can have brand new equipment used once or twice which explodes at an earthquake (seemingly regardless of how many handymen I have). The prospect of  re-loading a save from 10 minutes ago (or longer), moving through my hospital replacing every machine or calling a handyman for repair, saving again just before the earthquake and really hoping I didn't miss a room - all just makes me lean towards selecting to quit!

An alternative would need testing to ensure earthquakes are still a troublesome game mechanic. I would support as suggested; maybe a time penalty (the room becomes serviceable again after a period of time), or a money penalty (maybe a fine and clean-up charge to restore the room) or both.

[Debuff]

I think it should just be kept simple. Once a room is destroyed, you can just delete it like any other room and rebuild it. Wouldn't that be simple to code in from a programmer perspective?

[MarkL]

Rooms being destroyed is part of the challenge.

What we need to get right is the tremor before the main earthquake, as this warns you to check on your machines. 

[ChrisP]

Rooms being destroyed is part of the challenge.

Granted this specific experience is from a custom level in the latest build (although no earthquake controls where configured in the level), but I've had literately brand new machines explode during an earthquake. Not so much of a challenge, and not something a warning would have helped with!

Maybe this is just a problem with earthquakes being a bit too extreme to early in the level when there is no configuration in a custom map?

[LeDocteur]

I have stopped playing the original game for this very reason, please fix this! As the very motto of CorsixTH says, it's supposed to clone AND IMPROVE the original. Here is a quick solution:

- when a room is destroyed, it disappears completely as if it was edited and removed by the player
- rubble is automatically placed where the room used to be, including over the nearby walls
- one or more handymen will come and clean up random tiles as if it was common litter, except it will take a lot longer to clean up each tile
- when a tile has been cleaned up, any walls surrounding that tile will be cleansed as well
- when all tiles have been cleansed, the player will be able to rebuild there

I think this is a nice solution and easy to implement, if I would be familiar with LUA and the CorsixTH project (or at least had the time) I would have already done it myself... I also believe the quakes should do a lot less damage, they are supposed to force the players to take some action, not to handicap them! Right now I have hacked the machine.lua so that the machines won't explode anymore, but it kinda feels like cheating, oh well...

Anyways, CorsixTH is an amazing project, I had many hours of fun playing it, thank you all for making it possible and keep up the good work!