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#26 2019-08-21 10:19:51

DarkDrak
Member
Registered: 2019-06-05
Posts: 122

Re: End conditions for the rift...

Sorry, but this is hilarious. You can't really expect to see the results of map being depleted of resources on player stats. That's not how your game works. Maybe it's how you wish it to work, how you're trying to make it work, but that's not how it works right now.
It isnt even about the wild food.

Soil, Water, Stone Hoe uses, Iron Hoe uses, Shovel uses.
That's all.
These are the only links between the tetch chain and the food production chain. And we only need the latter for the player stats. With the abbundance of ponds, free soil and stones, we can keep a villege alive without the need for iron or a well for looong time. We just need some buckets, some baskets, a horsecart and a bowl.
And with the diesel mining pick, we can keep the map alive pretty much endlessly, resuscitating the same towns over and over and over again.

The map can be greifed into oblivion and we can have 4 towns using roughly 10'000 tiles each and have 460'000 tiles of the map to be a without a single tree, mufflon or goose and infested by bears; with all the wild berries dug out, wild food already consumed and all the cacti blocked by newcomen towers.
It doesnt matter.

The food cicle is self sustaining and 4 resourceful towns are enough to sustain a populationg of 70 players, which is the current top. It's gonna be a rinse and repeat of the same stuff for days. And some people will slaugher the towns off, kill their sheep, deplete their berries, greif its stew ingredients etc, in an attempt to force a reset. That also wont matter.

In such a limited map, just like it takes a few people to bring forth havoc and chaos, it takes only a few people to prevent it from dying out completely.
When pein made his engine from scraps gathered in five towns and used it to restore the iron to the map, little did he know that there were 2 engines hoarded away, a stash of 20 iron hoarded away and that someone had 3 chests full of steel and engine parts.
I remember i was making chisels in the NE town with some of that hoarded iron, back in the day, to use them with my engine to get more iron for more engines and keep the hell going longer and this man on a horse cart just came, brough iron, took my chisels and let me to his own engine that was closer.
Similiar stuff happened with junipers: people planted some of them hidden on the map and used them to replant them elsewhere.
The same stuff will happen with food ingredients. People will just store them away, then, when map gets low, we will reproduce them and get them to towns to replant them. All for the sake of prolonging everyone's suffering helping people survive.

Player stats can't possibly tell you how bad the situation is. Exept for a steady decline in the player average over the days, that tells how many people quit playing on bs2 out of frustration, but that's not something you can use, is it?


All the automatic reset conditions you tried to apply:

  • Eve window + number of moms;

  • Eve window + babies/mom;

  • number of families;

Are basically an indicator of murder sabotaging + how many players are around.
The eve window being superfluous as people spawning as eve cant really play as one anyway: they gotta settle in a dead town. Do or die.
The "if number of families drop below x" Is also an indicator of how many players are around + sistematic elemination of foreign families. It will be achieved as soon as most of the playerbase goes to sleep.

I get it, it would be really cool to have a system that automatically detects when the arc is no longer worthy of being continued and ends our suffering, but you're basically trying to create a virtual god, for a virtual world, that passes judgement on wether the world is worth of being kept alive or not... And you're trying to do it using only a bunch of player stats and you expect it to be right!
Just give us the power to decide that. And not with endstones that some people just rush at begining and teleport outside the rift.


Youtube guide to Oil and Kerosene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKSZHPiUK6A
Youtube guide to Diesel Engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sMX_GlwgbA&t=5s

World is not black and white

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#27 2019-08-21 15:43:42

Dodge
Member
Registered: 2018-08-27
Posts: 2,467

Re: End conditions for the rift...

DarkDrak wrote:

...

Even if there is a potential overabundance of ressources players still have to use them to produce something, if you have no iron a diesel mining rig but no kerosene ready and you cant make a fire + tools and food in time before dying and your lineage cant make it, it doesn't matter that there is a potential of x iron.

Of course it's hard to predict, but i think nerfing infinite wild foods would be enough to make civilisations collapse over time and show a very different graph that would allow a proper reset condition without having the game in a "bad" state (which is mostly caused by building griefing and broken swords anyways).

If too many Eve's fail to revive enough old towns to support all the players the arc ends it could be as easy as that.

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#28 2019-08-21 17:07:56

ryanb
Member
Registered: 2018-03-08
Posts: 217
Website

Re: End conditions for the rift...

I feel like you're looking for the wrong kind of fail condition. Why reset abruptly on a boring note? There is an opportunity to make the reset condition exciting and a critical part of the arc.

For example, what if there are totems on opposite sides of the map which will reset the server unless they are "fed" in some way (think opposite Nosaj's). The expense could slowly get higher requiring better technology over time. There could be an alarm which goes off with an arrow pointing to the totem when it needs to be fed. It could be an end-of-days scenario like the moon falling on Major's Mask and the scramble to work together to keep the world going.


One Hour One Life Crafting Reference
https://onetech.info/

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#29 2019-08-21 18:26:35

Saolin
Member
Registered: 2019-05-22
Posts: 393

Re: End conditions for the rift...

ryanb wrote:

I feel like you're looking for the wrong kind of fail condition. Why reset abruptly on a boring note? There is an opportunity to make the reset condition exciting and a critical part of the arc.

For example, what if there are totems on opposite sides of the map which will reset the server unless they are "fed" in some way (think opposite Nosaj's). The expense could slowly get higher requiring better technology over time. There could be an alarm which goes off with an arrow pointing to the totem when it needs to be fed. It could be an end-of-days scenario like the moon falling on Major's Mask and the scramble to work together to keep the world going.

Hmm this is a neat mechanic.

Personally, I'd still be fine with just ensuring an apocalypse is possible and leaving that as the reset condition, with an additional failsafe.

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#30 2019-08-21 18:34:40

Grim_Arbiter
Member
Registered: 2018-12-30
Posts: 943

Re: End conditions for the rift...

Dodge i disagree about the wild foods, because I think there's still a better way.

I like Ryan's base idea because it does let people choose to either keep it going, or let us end it.

The conflict around the "totems" could be a way more interesting thing than something that just happens the same way every time.


--Grim
I'm flying high. But the worst is never first, and there's a person that'll set you straight. Cancelling the force within my brain. For flying high. The simulator has been disengaged.

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#31 2019-08-21 18:47:35

Dodge
Member
Registered: 2018-08-27
Posts: 2,467

Re: End conditions for the rift...

Grim_Arbiter wrote:

Dodge i disagree about the wild foods, because I think there's still a better way.

You disagree that nerfing wild foods would lead to collapse of civilisations eventually?

Or you disagree about nerfing wild foods and want to find another way?

What would that better way be?

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#32 2019-08-21 18:54:10

Potjeh
Member
Registered: 2018-03-08
Posts: 469

Re: End conditions for the rift...

Eve window & reset when all families are extinct is the only reasonable option. Eve griefers are just too powerful.

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#33 2019-08-21 19:04:33

Grim_Arbiter
Member
Registered: 2018-12-30
Posts: 943

Re: End conditions for the rift...

Dodge wrote:
Grim_Arbiter wrote:

Dodge i disagree about the wild foods, because I think there's still a better way.

You disagree that nerfing wild foods would lead to collapse of civilisations eventually?

Or you disagree about nerfing wild foods and want to find another way?

What would that better way be?

Kinda both.

From the data that he pulled about all the foods eaten during the rift, berries and cactus fruit were high on the list.. but they weren't #1 and #2. People still ate those baked foods just as much. If you cut those wild foods it would just cause more people to bake to make up for it. I don't think it would bring a powerful enough result and just frustrate people.

I still think him letting it up to us to end it somehow might be a better option.


--Grim
I'm flying high. But the worst is never first, and there's a person that'll set you straight. Cancelling the force within my brain. For flying high. The simulator has been disengaged.

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#34 2019-08-21 19:21:39

DestinyCall
Member
Registered: 2018-12-08
Posts: 4,563

Re: End conditions for the rift...

Grim_Arbiter wrote:
Dodge wrote:
Grim_Arbiter wrote:

Dodge i disagree about the wild foods, because I think there's still a better way.

You disagree that nerfing wild foods would lead to collapse of civilisations eventually?

Or you disagree about nerfing wild foods and want to find another way?

What would that better way be?

Kinda both.

From the data that he pulled about all the foods eaten during the rift, berries and cactus fruit were high on the list.. but they weren't #1 and #2. People still ate those baked foods just as much. If you cut those wild foods it would just cause more people to bake to make up for it. I don't think it would bring a powerful enough result and just frustrate people.

I still think him letting it up to us to end it somehow might be a better option.



Or Jason could nerf pies.   Problem solved.  lol

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#35 2019-08-21 19:23:51

Dodge
Member
Registered: 2018-08-27
Posts: 2,467

Re: End conditions for the rift...

Grim_Arbiter wrote:
Dodge wrote:
Grim_Arbiter wrote:

Dodge i disagree about the wild foods, because I think there's still a better way.

You disagree that nerfing wild foods would lead to collapse of civilisations eventually?

Or you disagree about nerfing wild foods and want to find another way?

What would that better way be?

Kinda both.

From the data that he pulled about all the foods eaten during the rift, berries and cactus fruit were high on the list.. but they weren't #1 and #2. People still ate those baked foods just as much. If you cut those wild foods it would just cause more people to bake to make up for it. I don't think it would bring a powerful enough result and just frustrate people.

I still think him letting it up to us to end it somehow might be a better option.

If you're talking about the list from just before then end of the rift it was a list from all servers and not just bs2 (you can see bananas on the list which werent there on bs2 after a couple of days) so we cant really use that list.

Villages always ended up dying and the main thing that allowed reviving them is being able to count on a supply of free food, i personnally cant count the number of times eating wild foods avoided me starvation, at some point villages would make mistakes like not getting iron, oil, being lazy etc and would die off.

If enough villages die off due to players mistakes/lack of actions and we cant count on wild foods anymore it would be game over and the arc would end.

Ressources dont even need to be depleted because players would eventually make mistakes and doom villages that new Eve's wouldn't be able to revive which would lead to the end of the arc

Of course hard to predict but i think this could happen.

How would it frustrate people?

If you dont maintain civilisations the arc ends it seems fair.

It would only be frustrating at first because you remember how before wild foods could have saved you, but after a certain point it would be part of the game that you cant count on wild foods eternally and they regrow each time slower (or disappear completely).

The apocalypse is the way players have to end the arc, it just needs to get fixed with having enough nosaj, and solving issues with over the rift teleporting endstones and blocking objects.

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#36 2019-08-21 20:00:42

DarkDrak
Member
Registered: 2019-06-05
Posts: 122

Re: End conditions for the rift...

Dodge wrote:

...

Bruh, i just envisioned it the way you pictured it.
Towns collapsing one after another due to lack of food; people refusing to bring ingredients to other towns 'cause everyone wants an apoc now.
The vast majority of players is stuck being born as eves and starving as eves 'cause there will be no food at all on the whole map for them.
The ones who are born into families are left to starve 'cause people cant sustain them.
The cities are falling one after another due to internal and external greifing...


It finally comes down to one single civilization that stands in the way of a new begining..... The Greenhat Town!
Composed of self sufficient private town and 100% fenced off, self sustaining slums.
A big group of capitalists runs the main city from discord
All the other players on the server either get born in the slums, that have a strict 20people policy, get born in private town and left to starve or be born as feral eves/to feral eves and starve.
The greifing of slums bears no long term results 'cause all the neccessary resources will be produced and teleported there from the private town. It will be repopulated in a similiar way.

Holy shit that would be hilarious.



ryanb wrote:

There is an opportunity to make the reset condition exciting and a critical part of the arc.
totems which will reset the server unless they are "fed" in some way

Yes, that's what im talking about! An apoc condition that triggers unless procrastinated by people, not one that is brought forth by people! That's a nice one.
It could get slightly problematic if people decide to block it off with newcomens and the server will no longer be able to interact with it though. Blue's picture idea didnt have that problem.

What if those totems were craftable objects? and could be set down fairly easly, like 1st tier apoc towers, but for them to be settled as monuments they needed to be integrated with some advanced stuff? Then they could be tracked down like monuments. The reset condition would look like: if last totem settled is older that 12h, reset.


Youtube guide to Oil and Kerosene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKSZHPiUK6A
Youtube guide to Diesel Engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sMX_GlwgbA&t=5s

World is not black and white

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#37 2019-08-21 21:23:49

DarkDrak
Member
Registered: 2019-06-05
Posts: 122

Re: End conditions for the rift...

What if those totems were craftable objects? and could be set down fairly easly, like 1st tier apoc towers, but for them to be settled as monuments they needed to be integrated with some advanced stuff? Then they could be tracked down like monuments. The reset condition would look like: if last totem settled is older that 12h, reset.

By it being craftable it could be used as a tool to keep track of many different resources.
The crafting reciept could be something like this:

  • chisel + mallet on a log --> totem head  -  need: axe, chisel, adze, two trees  -  keeps track of trees and iron

  • tied shaft + totem head --> totem  -  need: straight shaft, rope  -  keeps track on maples and milkweed

  • totem + small trash pit --> placed totem (make it removable easly)  -  need: stakes, rouns stone, shovel  -  keeps track of iron and stones (added this one to avoid it becoming the new newcomen tower)

  • bowl of palm wax + placed totem --> waxed totem (still removable easly?)  -  need: basically a palm tree  -  keeps track of palm trees

  • goose feathers (several) + waxed totem --> decorated totem (still removable easly?)  -  need: feathers  -  keeps track of geese

  • cloth + decorated totem --> clothed totem  -  need: 6 bowls of berries and carrot, sheep, shears, loom  -  keeps track of sheep, berries and carrots

  • bloody knife + clothed totem --> bloody totem  -  need: a second player, maybe a medkit  -  keeps track of player faith in the cause

  • tank/bowl of kerosene + bloody totem --> bloody totem in kerosene  -  need: basically kerosene  -  keeps track of oil

  • firebrand + bloody totem in kerosene --> burning totem  -  need: straight shaft, firebow drill, leaf, tinder  -  keeps track of junipers and maples

  • burning totem + time --> sacrificed totem

  • sacrificed totem + buttered bread on clayplate --> sacrificed totem with offering  -  need: cow, bucket, corn, wheat, knife, plate, bowl  -  keeps track of wheat, corn, cows, bowls and plates

and that will be the monument.

I assume that engine-wise it would be a very cheap way to keep track of resource availibility on the map.
Though on the other hand, implementing something like this would be a lot of work.


Youtube guide to Oil and Kerosene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKSZHPiUK6A
Youtube guide to Diesel Engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sMX_GlwgbA&t=5s

World is not black and white

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#38 2019-08-22 01:13:22

Grim_Arbiter
Member
Registered: 2018-12-30
Posts: 943

Re: End conditions for the rift...

Dodge wrote:

It would only be frustrating at first because you remember how before wild foods could have saved you, but after a certain point it would be part of the game that you cant count on wild foods eternally and they regrow each time slower (or disappear completely).

The apocalypse is the way players have to end the arc, it just needs to get fixed with having enough nosaj, and solving issues with over the rift teleporting endstones and blocking objects.

Listen I agree that I could be wrong on this, but my gut tells me it would be far better if the apocalypse/end condition was reworked rather than the whole food system.

Destiny mentioned the pies, and I think if you eliminate those foods its just going to put stress on the pies, and require those to be reworked too.

I think the nosaj had its time and place, but i think THAT is the culprit here and not the food issue. If the nosaj apocalypse was possible during that rift would we even be talking about the food? Or would it have been triggered eventually, and have had created some eventful moments?

I think those discorders would have done that before their brilliant idea of hoarding everything and killing all their kids.


--Grim
I'm flying high. But the worst is never first, and there's a person that'll set you straight. Cancelling the force within my brain. For flying high. The simulator has been disengaged.

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#39 2019-08-22 03:43:23

jasonrohrer
Administrator
Registered: 2017-02-13
Posts: 4,805

Re: End conditions for the rift...

Sheesh!

It amazes me how hard this is.



One thing about the 5-family end condition (with no Eves after 12 hours or whatever) is that it naturally generates a kind of "totem" situation.  The "totems" that you are feeding are the 5 remaining families.  Players can "vote" to end it by letting the last family die (or killing it on purpose), or vote to continue by trying to help that last family stay alive.

If we get too few families, the game becomes less interesting and less fun, that's for sure.  Fewer places to be born.  Fewer unique situations.  Everyone looking the same.

It really feels boring (to me) if the entire map is made up of pockets of one large family, for example.  Maybe that alone should be the end condition (once there's only one family left, it ends).

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#40 2019-08-22 03:59:18

jasonrohrer
Administrator
Registered: 2017-02-13
Posts: 4,805

Re: End conditions for the rift...

Also, Twisted, I hear you on the Rift being same-y after 24 hours have passed....

The question:  what keeps the non-Rift game from being same-y?

The constant churn and rise-and-fall of towns.... so when you get born, it's always in a different place along the next town's arc, right?  Oh, this town needs to build a well.  Oh, this town needs oil.  Oh, this town needs an engine.

This is only possible BECAUSE all progress is lost, right?  And all progress is lost because families die out, not due to starvation, but due to birth distribution factors.

It must feel somewhat unsatisfying to KNOW that whatever you make will be lost in 24 hours.  I'll make an engine here, but it will be lost.  Players have expressed this frustration to me endlessly, of course.  But Twisted, are you not particularly affected by it?


The Rift isn't really the only way to achieve permanence in families.  Families were actually dying out repeatedly in the Rift just like they do outside of it (longest lineage 45 gens, or whatever).  The difference in the Rift is that the dead towns could be discovered and continued by new families.  So the towns kept living (with same established tech, which is boring, etc).

The other way to achieve the same thing is with NO RIFT but also a closing Eve window.  Then the families would survive forever (or at least one family would).  That last family could spread out and found new towns.  Each one would eventually die out, but the family itself would not.  So maybe it would feel less same-y?  New towns sprouting up through player actions (and not through an endlessly growing Eve spiral).

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#41 2019-08-22 06:54:17

CatX
Member
Registered: 2019-02-11
Posts: 464

Re: End conditions for the rift...

jasonrohrer wrote:

The question:  what keeps the non-Rift game from being same-y?

...

This is only possible BECAUSE all progress is lost, right?  And all progress is lost because families die out, not due to starvation, but due to birth distribution factors.

It must feel somewhat unsatisfying to KNOW that whatever you make will be lost in 24 hours.  I'll make an engine here, but it will be lost.  Players have expressed this frustration to me endlessly, of course.

I'm sure people enjoy very different things. Some are ready to embrace any situation and part of the fun is not knowing where you'll end up. Others who work on projects or fall in love with certain towns want to return there. I wouldn't be surprised if half of the player base wanted to keep the Rift while the other half wanted to see it gone.

However, it is possible in non-Rift games to return to old towns. It's just that the system actively tried to keep us from doing so. If you lived in one town in one life, it would bar you from being born in the same town in the next life. In the Rift, you could easily find your way back and continue on the old projects. So maybe the best of two worlds would be no Rift but where the player could choose to return to their previous town if they so wished.

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#42 2019-08-22 09:24:06

Twisted
Member
Registered: 2018-10-12
Posts: 663

Re: End conditions for the rift...

jasonrohrer wrote:

It must feel somewhat unsatisfying to KNOW that whatever you make will be lost in 24 hours.  I'll make an engine here, but it will be lost.  Players have expressed this frustration to me endlessly, of course.  But Twisted, are you not particularly affected by it?


Exactly, I don't care that the engine might be lost. It's probably going to last for several hours, and it will help my descendants, which is the entire reason I made it.

Yeah, that town is probably going to be gone ten hours from now. But it might not be! I might spawn back into it, and that's going to be a cool moment. It's a cool moment because it's a rare moment. If I knew that I was going to spawn back into that town later I probably wouldn't work as hard to improve it, because I'd know that I have a second chance to finish my work.

I know that most towns will die, and I know that I did my small part in helping that town have its own unique story, and that's why I play his game - for the unique stories. If everything I make lasts forever then that's not very interesting, and I don't really have the motivation to make more stuff.

Besides, the rift doesn't help at all with things being lost. Every single thing ever made inside a rift will disappear within a few days. That doesn't change. The only thing that changes is that the rift has less potential unique stories to tell, which is why I don't enjoy playing in it as much. The only unique stories happen in the first ~12 hours, and I'm probably not going to play during that period as I don't play every day, so why even bother?

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#43 2019-08-22 09:39:01

Dodge
Member
Registered: 2018-08-27
Posts: 2,467

Re: End conditions for the rift...

Twisted wrote:

...

What if climbing the techtree would take 2-3 days instead of 12 hours and instead of having one single land it would be continents separated by oceans, so even if in one continent they have big civilisations with engines in another continent a new Eve would just have spawned and start a fresh new civ.

But the whole map would be persistent with limited ressources and size, so there would still be a long term arc with different levels of civilisations at the same time, wouldn't that be the best of both worlds?

Last edited by Dodge (2019-08-22 09:40:19)

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#44 2019-08-22 17:23:15

jasonrohrer
Administrator
Registered: 2017-02-13
Posts: 4,805

Re: End conditions for the rift...

Thanks for those insights, Twisted.

I think you're right about all of this.  There is something special about this little fragile "bubble" scraping by out there in the vast wilderness.  If it gives us nothing else, at least it gives us a feeling.  And finding another village (abandonned or thriving) is a very special feeling.  Also, if the village does survive, HOLY CRAP, THIS IS MY VILLAGE is an amazing moment.  And it happens rarely.


Still, I can't shake the feeling that something is missing here....  that it could be better than this, somehow.


Part of the problem is that villages all die out no matter what in 24 hours, REGARDLESS of player choices or skill.  People have pointed out, quite a bit, that this happens to every village, and it feels unfair and frustrating.  Eventually, they roll 6 boys in a row, or other new families suck babies away resulting in a baby drought, etc.  You can see this in the final leaves of every family tree.


I feel like we never get a chance for a true village downfall story to happen.  I think that would be really interesting if it did.... or if every village eventually went through downfall as part of the natural course of things.  Then it would feel fair, because players could have done better and kept it going longer.

Yes, I could fix the baby distribution issues, but currently, if I did that, one family would just last forever and ever, due to the infinite map.

I do need to be able to tweak resource scarcity to make true downfalls happen (like maybe there's too much surface water, or too many tarry spots).  But the problem is that in an infinite map, this results in a harder and harder (and less interesting) search problem for players.  In a finite map, the whole thing can be explored.  So even if there's only 2 tarry spots in the whole Rift, they will be found eventually.  In an infinite map, I just can't make tarry spots (for example) rare enough, without the needle in a haystack problem.



Finally, there's the whole trade issue.  I think it's interesting, and I do think it's possible within the scope of this game.  I don't mean just inter-village trade, but also just inter-personal trade.  I still think it just doesn't make sense in the context of infinite resources.  Unless I make some super rare, and then we're back to needle-haystack in an infinite map.

How could I make oil rare enough so that on only one village has it, in an infinite map?

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#45 2019-08-22 17:26:34

DestinyCall
Member
Registered: 2018-12-08
Posts: 4,563

Re: End conditions for the rift...

Dodge wrote:
Twisted wrote:

...

What if climbing the techtree would take 2-3 days instead of 12 hours and instead of having one single land it would be continents separated by oceans, so even if in one continent they have big civilisations with engines in another continent a new Eve would just have spawned and start a fresh new civ.

But the whole map would be persistent with limited ressources and size, so there would still be a long term arc with different levels of civilisations at the same time, wouldn't that be the best of both worlds?

I like this.   I also like the idea that you would need to reach the high end of the tech tree and build a plane to fly out of the rift to reach fresh lands.    Even better, provide the ability to build a bridge so you could connect the old lands and the new lands ... but only AFTER you (or one of your ancestors) managed to reach the other side by flying out.   

My thinking is allowing the construction of a bridge from one side of the rift over to the other, but the bridge supports must be constructed on BOTH sides before the bridge is finished.   So to complete the bridge, you need someone on the outside and the only way to GET on the other side is by flying over using a plane.    Then the bridge could be built to allow easier travel for future generations.   Or deconstructed to temporarily cut off access to the other rift.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2019-08-22 17:27:11)

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#46 2019-08-22 17:41:23

CatX
Member
Registered: 2019-02-11
Posts: 464

Re: End conditions for the rift...

jasonrohrer wrote:

How could I make oil rare enough so that on only one village has it, in an infinite map?

How about if oil is only found in the center? So families either have to travel to the center of the map and live there in a town that will not disappear, because people will always need to either settle there or build their town elsewhere but trade for oil?

Perhaps the center of the map could be devoid of some other useful item as well, in a Rift-sized area. Rabbit fur comes to mind... A family that wants to build a town near the center would have to be advanced enough to bring rabbit furs or bellows in order to settle, and later they would have to trade for it or travel far to get it. Or perhaps the center of the map could be devoid of iron.

Maybe.

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#47 2019-08-22 17:52:30

jasonrohrer
Administrator
Registered: 2017-02-13
Posts: 4,805

Re: End conditions for the rift...

Seems like we effectively have a finite map then, right?  I mean, you simply can't build a town more than a lifetime's walk away from the center, if that's the only oil field.  Yes, there's wilderness further out, but it's useless.

(Maybe that feels better psychologically than a big black wall, but I want to just cut to the chase and show player's what's what, instead of letting them wander through useless wilderness by accident.)

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#48 2019-08-22 17:57:45

CatX
Member
Registered: 2019-02-11
Posts: 464

Re: End conditions for the rift...

jasonrohrer wrote:

Seems like we effectively have a finite map then, right?  I mean, you simply can't build a town more than a lifetime's walk away from the center, if that's the only oil field.  Yes, there's wilderness further out, but it's useless.

(Maybe that feels better psychologically than a big black wall, but I want to just cut to the chase and show player's what's what, instead of letting them wander through useless wilderness by accident.)

I guess you would have to live in walking or riding distance to the nearest town with an airstrip and a plane... With a distribution network for the oil, towns could slowly grow farther and farther away from the center.

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#49 2019-08-22 18:33:34

DarkDrak
Member
Registered: 2019-06-05
Posts: 122

Re: End conditions for the rift...

Or... People would just build several wells to newcomen pump until a young girl just runs away and pseudo eves in green pastures a decent distance away and people will just let the town die out. Rinse and repeat for every new town and the oil will become just a legend.


For trade to be viable, we gotta have cases in which trading a resource would be faster and easier than producing it, and cases in which producing the same resourse would be faster than trading for it.
The current map topografy gave me an idea: Oil can only be gotten from either tundra or desert. Rubber can only be made with a jungle. A mountain top can only have 1 or 2 of those....
So a town close to a jungle but far from desert or tundra could trade rubber for kerosene with a town far from jungle but close to tundra.

Exept now it cant happen for three reasons:
1) You cant trade with someone whom you cant even understand;
2) A town doesnt need either of those resources in big quantities, so trying to trade them is totally not worth the risk of being killed on sight. 2 trips to the jungle that's 300 tiles away from town gets enough palm kernels and latex to make 2 atmosferic cores, 1 driving meccanism and 1 diesel engine. 3 trips should be enough for the whole life cycle of a city;
3) Generally it's easier to kill off a town and loot it rather than estabilish a trading relationship with them. A huge part of it is the ability to block off the gates with irremovable stuff.


Youtube guide to Oil and Kerosene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKSZHPiUK6A
Youtube guide to Diesel Engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sMX_GlwgbA&t=5s

World is not black and white

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#50 2019-08-22 19:02:20

Grim_Arbiter
Member
Registered: 2018-12-30
Posts: 943

Re: End conditions for the rift...

I think there's something to that oil idea..

If 4 existed 20 or 30 tiles from the tarr monument in every direction N,S,E,W I think you could see a lot of interesting things happen.

Maybe one greedy family would try to own all 4 but face the entire world.. Or 4 families could each own one and try to snag them from eachother, while also dealing with the families that that don't own one (could even be done positively with ally families that work out some agreement)

I think the only drastic change that would need to be made is to make the oil infinite, or at least last a long while. The engines would need to break down like the pumps.. i mean they are "crude engines" after all.


--Grim
I'm flying high. But the worst is never first, and there's a person that'll set you straight. Cancelling the force within my brain. For flying high. The simulator has been disengaged.

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