Consider changing the recipe for Mixed Dry Stone Fence

[Wishes4Fishes]

I went on an absolute odyssey of tens of thousands of blocks just to find chalk and phyllite to make this cute fence. It took me so many real life hours and many many in game days.
The crafting recipe requires you to use very specific stones in a very specific order. It should really allow you to use any stones, so long as each stone is different. I have a large variety of stones in the area I made my home, and it was frustrating that a lot of them just don't work in a recipe for a fence made of random rocks. At the very least remove phyllite from the recipe because that variety of rock seems to be quite rare.

[LadyWYT]

I'm a little on the fence about this one. On the one hand, it's kind of cool having some materials be more difficult to acquire, thus giving them added value when building with them. At the same time, it's also frustrating when you really want to use that material and have to spend hours upon hours trying to get ahold of it. I don't remember how many stone types there are in the game, but I'm pretty sure there's more than 8-9, so making the recipe craftable as long as each one is unique seems fair. If nothing else, make the bauxite required(since it's the only bright orange one and you'll need to find bauxite for other things anyway) and let the rest be random uniques.

Alternatively, the recipe could be left as-is and a couple of variants added instead--light and dark mixed stone. They could each utilize the lighter stones and darker stones respectively, giving players both more building options as well as a slightly easier time hunting down one of the variants to build with. It doesn't seem like something that would be too difficult to add on the coding end of things either.

[Wishes4Fishes]

I'm not sure if Bauxite should be required since the texture shows a dark brown stone, and yet no dark brown stones are part of the crafting recipe. (Are there any dark brown stones in the game at all?)

Getting 8 unique stones is already a bit of a hassle that will require at least some travel and effort anyway. Some seeds more than others. So if it was any 8 unique rocks you'd still have that factor of challenge and effort. I think that is a good effort-to-reward ratio. Currently its astronomical effort for a small but unique cosmetic reward. 

[Thorfinn]

Problem is the way recipes are specified -- one recipe for each possible combination. (Or at least that seems to be how mods I've looked at that use all the variants of woods are coded. No idea if you have to do it that way, or if there is some wildcard option that is not being used.) Each permutation, actually, since you want to be able to place them in the crafting grid in any order.

I believe there are currently 20 stones, excluding things like halite and obsidian and counting only one kind of marble, and if you need 8 different stones, that's 20! / (20-8)! recipes, or a smidge over 5 billion different recipes.

If you go with just the basic 14(?) stones, that would drop the number appreciably -- 14! / (14-8)!, or a mere 121 million recipes.

 

[Wishes4Fishes]

Oh wow I didnt think thats how recipes work. Yeah never mind, making it in any order is impossible.

Regardless, maybe the recipe should be changed to only have stones of sedimentary rock. Or just replace phyllite with andesite

[Thorfinn]

You could have a dozen or so recipes no problem, I would think. So long as you were willing to have the handbook open to see the order, that's a lot of possible variety. There's no andesite in that recipe? What stone is the blue-gray, do you know?

The one to ask would be @DanaCraluminum. That's who has all the wood variant recipes. I suspect (but have not looked to see) that those mods are at least iterated instead of hardcoded.

[EDIT]

If you were willing to use the handbook, then 14 choose 8 combinations is only 3003 recipes. Still quite a few, but vastly more manageable. 12 choose 8 is only 495.

It could be made almost trivial with a shapeless crafting system like Terraria or Stardew Valley. You have 8 different stones in inventory (or maybe in open or workbench associated chests)? Great, you have what you need to make that item.

Or maybe this is something that could be done more like clayforming? Or more like chiseling, but many at a time? Build a drystack fence by placing the rocks?

[/EDIT]

Edited May 26 by Thorfinn

[LadyWYT]

On 5/26/2024 at 6:36 AM, Thorfinn said:

It could be made almost trivial with a shapeless crafting system like Terraria or Stardew Valley. You have 8 different stones in inventory (or maybe in open or workbench associated chests)? Great, you have what you need to make that item.

Shapeless crafting is what crossed my mind. I'm not entirely sure how it all works on the code side of things, but I think the way shapeless crafting typically works is checking for a keyword or two to make sure the materials are correct(like "stone" or "wood"), but otherwise doesn't care exactly where you put it in the crafting grid when crafting the item.

[Thorfinn]

Sort of. You also need some additional keywords or options or something so you could specify that each stone must be different.

The way the other games do it is not just shapeless, but also gridless. They don't have to specify valid recipes; they would just check to see if you have 8 different stone types and one plank.

I do think this is kind of a bragging rights thing, though. You see a house of mixed stone blocks and you know that represents a lot of exploration.

[LadyWYT]

If nothing else, it could be stuff that the traders sell. Then it acts as a currency sink for players to spend gears on.