One Hour One Life Forums

Legs, the expected iron from pre-diesel is 8 loose (first two stages), then 19 with pick (third stage) and then 46 with pick and stanchion. 

Onetech is still outdated.  Not sure what's going on there.

Interesting stuff!

A number of these things have been considered and discussed in the past.

The "rare items, but you know exactly where they are" is a good idea, and would solve the problem.  There is some implementation headache (like, what if they type /ORE instead of /IRON, or what if they don't know exactly what it's called---i.e., how do they tell you what they're looking for, when there are 75 natural items them might want to find?)  There's also a kinda weird realism issue (radar for iron, for oil, for clay?)  Anyway, in terms of solving the problem, things could actually run out locally.  Closest loose iron is 500 tiles away?  Maybe we should install that kero-powered mining rig instead of walking that far.

Not sure about the really huge biomes.  I've never been a fan of that suggestion, but I'm not 100% sure why.  I guess I feel like it would make walking around boring and tedious (how much farther do I need to go to get to the desert?)

When trying to do personal skill specialization, the idea of learning from others was definitely examined pretty closely.  There's a bootstrapping problem, of course, and a problem where people get "stuck" waiting for random-rolled inspiration to replace a forgotten skill.  Also, I can imagine it would be frustrating to KNOW how to do something, but not be able to.  Like, the player KNOWS how to use a bowdrill to make a fire, but they are born "dumb," and they have to find someone to demo it for them (which might be busy-work.... going through the motions demoing skills to people over and over each life).

With the tool slots, if they want to make fire, and know how, they can do it, and make it one of their chosen skills for that life.  There's nothing stopping them from doing any particular thing.  There's something stopping them from doing ALL things in the same life, though.

For the race restrictions, you might know how to get oil and not be able to this life.... but you still know how to get it.  You follow an expert way stone and go talk to a ginger.

Ooops, onetech is out-dated.  It is a problem with two +primaryHomeland tags in there.

I'm looking at it right now.

Oh, yeah.... I think the +primaryHomeland tag was on two things by accident, which prevents the second upgrade from happening.

Will fix and update servers today.

Before you unleash your rage upon me, remember that this is Sunday morning, my (only) day off, and my kids are waiting to spend time with me.

Software has bugs.

This seems to have been resolved, eventually.  But it definitely wasn't so smooth.

Update process is almost done.

Yes, I am looking for ways to re-enable outposts and "fake eves" in the future.

Well, Twisted, you at least inspired the idea.

Fug punched a hole in the initial version that I came up with (where you unlock more mines by founding more homelands), which led me to the version where there are a non-growing number of mines for family.

Gogo:

You can put a property fence around your car or plane to make a "private garage" area to prevent theft.  Of course, at the end of your life, you need to pick someone who will keep the fence going and "inherit" your vehicle.

There used to be a problem with "cargo cult" landing strips that could be used to lure pilots and steal their planes.  That has been fixed.  You can read a map right before flying, and it will pick the landing strip closest to the destination of your map.

So you can fly to "trusted" landing strips only, and bring a map to return home (or make way stones near each runway pointing to the other runway).  And you can build a property fence near each runway, or even around it, to protect this whole setup and prevent your plane from being stolen.

Instant long-distance travel for 2 kero round-trip.

Anyway, you have the building blocks in hand for private and secure air travel.

Twisted, it it was a better game, there would be way more people playing it.

There are fundamental things that make it less "good" than other games (like the one-hour time commitment per game played, the fundamental lack of player progress from hour to hour, etc).  I can't fix those things without abandoning the fundamental premise of the game.

But there are other things that have nothing to do with the fundamental premise that are not good.  They make the game more boring and less interesting than it would be otherwise.

Infinite resources, in all their various forms, are one of those things.  There's nothing in the premise of the game that requires infinite resources.  Instead, "Everything Runs Out" was the mantra from the beginning:

http://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=63

It has been a two-year process, going all the way back to the removal of infinite carrots.  But each time one of those things was fixed, after some massaging to get the balance right, the game became better.

You might currently say that water is finite for "most" towns, except for a few veteran players who can make a diesel engine and get oil.

And water is an even more fundamental resource than iron.

Yet somehow, it works.

I didn't mention the other stuff, because bottles were an illustrative example.

I don't want you making anything just to make it.  Let's extend this rail track off to nowhere, just for the sake of making a long rail track.

Whatever you make, it should be because you need it.  Always.  No pretending.  No make-believe.  All real.  If rail tracks aren't worth it, that's a problem with the utility of rail tracks, not because of a lack of iron.

Does your house in real life have spring-loaded doors on every side?  My house has only two doors, one on the front, and another on the back (which is mandated by law for fire escape, perhaps).  Doors are expensive, so people think carefully and put them in optimal spots.

You still have infinite iron, you just need to pay for it (at first with food, and then with oil).

Oil is currently infinite (at the cost of iron pipes, for more drilling exploration).  So these two resources are wedded at the hip, which is a good thing.

And you can also wander around looking for dead villages to scrape a little pre-diesel iron out of.  Even that is far more interesting than just wandering around picking free iron off the ground.