a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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I'm talking about just shallow and deep wells here.
Shallow and deep wells have several 'charges', and every time you use it you have a small chance of taking away a charge. Once the charge number reaches zero the well dries out. On average the shallow well goes dry after taking out 134 bowls, and the deep well goes out after taking out 33 buckets (=330 bowls).
The 'problem' with this is twofold - one, the early well stages expire incredibly quickly and beacause of that they're rarely seen/used (if you take out one bowl every ten seconds on average the shallow well will run out after about 20 minutes), and two, you're encouraged to drain them out asap so you can advance to the next, more efficient stage.
But what if shallow/deep wells didn't have charges, and were instead on a timer (potentially with a small cooldown between water harvesting)? Imagine if a shallow well always lasted three hours and the deep well always lasted six hours, but there was a 5 second cooldown between uses. Now water management becomes more important - your town is limited to 12 bowls of water per minute for the first three hours, and you have to be careful to use them in an efficient manner. Also, actually managing water becomes a real job - you want to have an efficient array of cisterns so you can get as much water as possible out of your wells while they're active. Currently the system is kind of binary, you either have more water than you need or you have none. But with this change you'd have a constant influx of water that can be adjusted to be more efficient with player input.
This would also slightly slow down the technological evolution of towns which can be both a good thing and a bad thing depending on your point of view. It's hard to run the newcomen to make a diesel engine if your town only has one bucket per minute.
Thoughts? Is there something here or does this sound like just an annoyance?
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How would you anticipate late stage wells interacting with this mechanic? Would they be as they are today, or set a new timer and cool-down on the well?
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Standing your whole life next to a well with a bowl counting 5 seconds each time to get some water to fill a cistern sounds like top tier gameplay...
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How would you anticipate late stage wells interacting with this mechanic? Would they be as they are today, or set a new timer and cool-down on the well?
I think the later stage wells are fine as they are since they require a resource input to get water in return.
Standing your whole life next to a well with a bowl counting 5 seconds each time to get some water to fill a cistern sounds like top tier gameplay...
Yes, I agree that sounds kinda dull which is why I posted this thread to get some thoughts on the idea. Are you going to add something to the discussion or are you just going to complain and bait for arguments like you usually do?
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Yes, I agree that sounds kinda dull which is why I posted this thread to get some thoughts on the idea. Are you going to add something to the discussion or are you just going to complain and bait for arguments like you usually do?
The only one baiting arguments is you right now, if you're too sensitive and cant take reasonnable feedback maybe you should abstain, dont need to be so aggressive...
The 'problem' with this is twofold - one, the early well stages expire incredibly quickly and beacause of that they're rarely seen/used (if you take out one bowl every ten seconds on average the shallow well will run out after about 20 minutes), and two, you're encouraged to drain them out asap so you can advance to the next, more efficient stage.
The real issue is that each family has their own well and mine, you dont need to travel to find more and you dont need to/cant relocate if you run out.
Wells and mines should have much less water and iron in them but you should be able to dig as much springs and dig as many mines as you want of course this only works if the map is not infinite.
The well in your village runs out and you didnt get enough iron from the mine to upgrade the well so you have to travel to find either a new source of water or iron, but that new source could already be used by another village, maybe both the villages can cooperate depending on the iron tools they already made and the ressources each other have or maybe you choose to travel further to find another one, which could be riskier depending on which biome you have to cross.
Timers are not necessarly a bad idea but not implemented like this, you could have a new cycle of iron every x hours until it's depleted, this would make it so you need more than one source of iron, these mines could be relatively far away from each other so it would definitly be worth making a map to their location and maybe even a road, and since every village would need iron they would either need a peaceful agreement to share the access of the mines or a more violent one if the resources where managed poorly and they became too scarce for the survival of multiple civilisations.
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The only one baiting arguments is you right now, if you're too sensitive and cant take reasonnable feedback maybe you should abstain, dont need to be so aggressive...
Reasonable feedback would entail stating what you thought, not sarcasm.
Timers on wells as a concept doesn't work, because it's impossible to balance. 5 people in a town on a timer balanced around 15 people in a town is significantly easier, while 25 people in the same town is a disaster, with people not able to survive no matter what they do. Also, because waiting around for water on the basis of time makes for an exercise in patience. Even wells based on generation number has the same issue, if the family tree becomes more horizontal or vertical the balance gets ruined one way or another. The current system works as more balanced.
Also, Twisted's original post isn't correct in one respect. Upgrading from a shallow well to a deep well as soon as possible does make sense, since buckets move water faster usually than bowls. But, upgrading from a deep well to a newcomen pump is not advisable, since you can get more water out of a deep well via regeneration.
It does come as possible to dig as many wells as one likes at present.
The game needs more technology, possibly more water stages included, for it take longer for the players to climb the tech tree. "More content" comes as likely the only solution that will work in any substantial respect.
Also, seeing shallow wells and deep wells was more common once. Why did things change? The spring system. Wells into ponds was thus easily a better system in terms of seeing early well stages. And back then villages were different as sometimes you saw towns with lots of deep wells and players just avoiding pumps. Sometimes you'd see a diesel water pump early, and originally they could only get installed on a shallow well. Sometimes you'd see a charcoal pump and then not see a diesel water pump for a long time. Since the spring system it's been pretty much the same linear progression with less variance time wise.
Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.
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Also, Twisted's original post isn't correct in one respect. Upgrading from a shallow well to a deep well as soon as possible does make sense, since buckets move water faster usually than bowls. But, upgrading from a deep well to a newcomen pump is not advisable, since you can get more water out of a deep well via regeneration.
This is a bad argument Spoon. You should absolutely rush through the early water stages because once you're out of shallow/deep you can make water on command. Saying the possibility for regeneration is an argument for staying on deep is not only silly but absurd. Two and a half hours wait time for ten water OR the possibility of 12.5% chance to gain charge PER wait period is just not feasible for anyone playing on the main server.
If we're going to be acting silly why not just suicide the family and walk back every time we need to get more water since wells revert once the family is dead. Try to reel it back in to a reasonable thought.
Also, seeing shallow wells and deep wells was more common once. Why did things change? The spring system. Wells into ponds was thus easily a better system in terms of seeing early well stages. And back then villages were different as sometimes you saw towns with lots of deep wells and players just avoiding pumps. Sometimes you'd see a diesel water pump early, and originally they could only get installed on a shallow well. Sometimes you'd see a charcoal pump and then not see a diesel water pump for a long time. Since the spring system it's been pretty much the same linear progression with less variance time wise.
You're welcome to have your own opinion but I'll happily disagree. There absolutely should have been a water change from the previous system of building as many wells as humanly possible on ponds. This greatly limited the areas where you could set up while discouraging smart players from sticking around in areas that did not have enough ponds.
The current system at least encourages you to think about where you stick your families as you need to think a bit deeper on where a well should be vs just looking for the largest possible cluster of ponds.
While it was nice to potentially fire up a few newcomens at once this wasn't something normally done. Wells would get upgraded but most folks fired one at a time instead of quickly producing a bunch of water on the spot.
The only glaring issues I would say right now besides early game water sources being best to speed through is the whole iron system being tied to wells and yadda yadda.
Worlds oldest SID baby.
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You should absolutely rush through the early water stages because once you're out of shallow/deep you can make water on command.
No, you can't make water on command, because you need tires for the next stage. It works out better to get tires once a deep well has gotten used once, and preferably also kerosene for the kerosene newcomen pump later.
I stand by what I said. Emptying out the deep well as soon as possible doesn't make sense. It kills off water regeneration possibility, which decreases water potential, without any known benefit.
This greatly limited the areas where you could set up while discouraging smart players from sticking around in areas that did not have enough ponds.
There was no town that died from water issues that I knew of back then. Players who left, because of few ponds weren't smart in that they could have handled that water situation if they knew how to make a charcoal pump.
Also, there's more benefit to setting up in a swamp than other places, because of the short distance to run for clay often.
Where water gets stuck isn't much of a consideration for the current system, because of how iron gets tied into it. Also, even under the old iron system, setting up near a swamp made the most sense, and not because of water consideration, but because of moving materials to make technology.
Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.
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Spoon, I'm not going to even dignify you with any sort of thought out argument if you are going to live in la-la land. You run out of water in a deep well from my experience in about 2-3 hours depending on how efficient or effective people are being with water. Water generation periods are 1 water per 36 minutes or 3% chance to gain a charge and the previously noted hour and a half.
That's not sustainable at all for farming or even baking and in the time you could wait for water you can easily make dozens of tires. In fact, you've inspired me to play an hour to just make a heaping pile of tires to prove my point.
Edit: With large breaks in between rubber making due to language barrier/people wanting to actually play the game I still made about 3 dozen tires. The average newcomen pump lasts about 41 goes before being completely drained.
Some notes: I played black and had a rubber wheeled horse cart. If I drew any real conclusion from this it's other races really should have horse spawns too OR some sort of transport animal. 10 minute walks back and forth between tan and black towns would have been unbearably boring. If towns can't be close transport needs to be available to everyone. 1/6th+ of your game play should not be a walking simulator.
Last edited by fug (2021-03-07 04:04:22)
Worlds oldest SID baby.
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That's not sustainable at all for farming or even baking and in the time you could wait for water you can easily make dozens of tires.
Sustainability isn't the point. It's getting an extra bucket of water for free if you can.
Some notes: I played black and had a rubber wheeled horse cart. If I drew any real conclusion from this it's other races really should have horse spawns too OR some sort of transport animal. 10 minute walks back and forth between tan and black towns would have been unbearably boring. If towns can't be close transport needs to be available to everyone. 1/6th+ of your game play should not be a walking simulator.
I agree with this. Thing is, since I often travel between towns, often going from older generation families to younger generation families, something like 1/6 of my game play is as a walking simulator. A family selector screen would remedy this situation.
Danish Clinch.
Longtime tutorial player.
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I'm pretty sure that sustainability is the point. Otherwise, you'll run out of water and die before you get that free bucket of water.
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