Vintage Story needs a mechanical logsplitter.

[Michael Gates]

This is all reddit's fault, btw.

At first glance, it seems pointless to add a machine to do logsplitting. You already can split a full stack of logs by dropping it and an axe in the crafting grid, shift-click, done. This is pretty much the minimum number of clicks for any manipulation, so no benefit in adding a complicated way to do the same thing.

The solution here is to make manual logsplitting harder, so that a machine is comparatively better. There's a simple way to handle that. Have the player create a log-splitting platform-- easy to imagine a recipe for that, possibly something like one log in middle of the craft grid and several stones below it. Place that platform on the ground, axe in main hand, stack of logs in off hand, and hit the platform once for each log. You get a cool animation where the log from off-hand goes on platform, the axe comes down (nngh!), and the logs fall off to the left and right. Immersion, yay!

Of course that's also slow. Which creates an opening for a device that can do it faster, with a big metal wedge and a horizontal back and forth gizmo and a place up top with a (limited) capacity for multiple logs. Careful design would also allow the player to do even better, with real hoppers and chutes to direct logs in and firewood out.

One other point: the gizmo should wear out. EVERYTHING should wear out. The durability on machines can be high, that's fine, but time comes for us all. The future should not be a copper helve hammer stamping on a steel plate, forever.

Edited January 9, 2025 by Michael Gates
hit save by accident before I was done.

[Thorfinn]

There is a more immersive log splitting mod out there. And I wouldn't swear it wasn't just a dream, but I I thought there's an automated version of it. And there's now a wear and tear mod, too. No idea if it scrapes for machines or if they have to be specifically defined in the mod.

Nice last sentence. Must be the day for literary references.

Edited January 9, 2025 by Thorfinn

[LadyWYT]

45 minutes ago, Michael Gates said:

At first glance, it seems pointless to add a machine to do logsplitting. You already can split a full stack of logs by dropping it and an axe in the crafting grid, shift-click, done. This is pretty much the minimum number of clicks for any manipulation, so no benefit in adding a complicated way to do the same thing.

The solution here is to make manual logsplitting harder, so that a machine is comparatively better. There's a simple way to handle that. Have the player create a log-splitting platform-- easy to imagine a recipe for that, possibly something like one log in middle of the craft grid and several stones below it. Place that platform on the ground, axe in main hand, stack of logs in off hand, and hit the platform once for each log. You get a cool animation where the log from off-hand goes on platform, the axe comes down (nngh!), and the logs fall off to the left and right. Immersion, yay!

Of course that's also slow. Which creates an opening for a device that can do it faster, with a big metal wedge and a horizontal back and forth gizmo and a place up top with a (limited) capacity for multiple logs. Careful design would also allow the player to do even better, with real hoppers and chutes to direct logs in and firewood out.

I do like the idea of a sawmill, and I'm not entirely against making woodcutting more immersive persay, but I'm also not sure that it's the best idea(there'd likely be a lot of backlash). However, fire clay was changed to be a more grindy process, and that change has felt fine, so who knows.

The main issue I see(aside from the grindy nature), is that without some other kind of mechanical power than windmills, making a change like this now would put even more strain on the automation process. It's fairly easy to get a small windmill set up before the end of the first year, and while tedious, you can juggle a helve hammer, quern, and pulverizer around it as needed. But it's tedious, and the wind isn't always strong enough to power your machines. And wood, whether it be firewood or planks, is something you always need, and don't want to sink hours into chopping by hand.

Now if there were a waterwheel or some other slower but more consistent kind of power available in addition to windmills, I could see a change like this working, as then you wouldn't have absolutely all machinery bottlenecked by how much flax you can manage to plant.

53 minutes ago, Michael Gates said:

One other point: the gizmo should wear out. EVERYTHING should wear out. The durability on machines can be high, that's fine, but time comes for us all.

A fair point, but I think one better suited to be an optional challenge setting, similar to to "no placing infinite water sources from a bucket". It might not be the most realistic thing, but it's nice to be able to go off on an adventure and know that things aren't going to be falling apart while I'm away. And being away from home for extended lengths of time are no longer optional, if one is intending to play through the main story.

56 minutes ago, Michael Gates said:

The future should not be a copper helve hammer stamping on a steel plate, forever.

This I think you could fix by simply requiring an iron helve hammer or better in order to work steel, just like you need certain tiers of pounder caps to pulverize certain materials. In that case, players could still sink the resources into building a copper helve hammer if they really wanted, but they certainly aren't going to be accomplishing much with it other than hammering out plates of soft metal.

[Thorfinn]

34 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

However, fire clay was changed to be a more grindy process, and that change has felt fine, so who knows.

The reason is obviously that it wasn't anywhere nearly as bad as we thought going into it. It takes, what, 9 to make an oven? Only 32 to make a stack of firebrick? It makes it worthwhile to spend a little effort getting tier 2 refractory, but only a little.

But that's also with relatively easy charcoal production. A half-dozen stacks of logs is sufficient, if you aren't going nuts like building roads out of charcoal.  But if you had t split all 96 of those logs, even at 3 hits per log, that's 288 clicks. I'm reasonably patient, but I'm not 288-clicks-for-a-minimal-stake patient.

Edited January 9, 2025 by Thorfinn

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

But if you had t split all 96 of those logs, even at 3 hits per log, that's 288 clicks. I'm reasonably patient, but I'm not 288-clicks-for-a-minimal-stake patient.

Neither am I. In reality, I doubt the wood-chopping process would need to change if a sawmill were added. Just the convenience of having a machine to refine logs into planks and firewood instead of having to do it yourself in the crafting grid would be incentive enough to build one. And there'd still be mods in the event it wasn't immersive enough.

[Thorfinn]

2 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Just the convenience of having a machine to refine logs into planks and firewood instead of having to do it yourself in the crafting grid would be incentive enough to build one.

That may be true. It depends on how much durability the sawmill has. If it's infinite, sure, why not? If it goes through blades as fast as it does with the hand saw, plus you have to wait...?

More stuff to juggle through the one windmill you have, but I often have nothing running on it so that's usually not a big deal. The big deal would be bringing your 20 stacks of logs all the way home, waiting for them to convert into 40 stacks of firewood, so you could make charcoal. When that's something you could have done on-site with a couple stacks of flint axe heads.

[LadyWYT]

3 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

If it's infinite, sure, why not? If it goes through blades as fast as it does with the hand saw, plus you have to wait...?

Fair point. I would make it infinite, since other mechanical things do not degrade from use, and making them degrade isn't the best idea for reasons I stated previously. That being said, whichever method was chosen(wear-and-tear or no) needs to apply to all machinery, and not just one.

6 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

waiting for them to convert into 40 stacks of firewood, so you could make charcoal.

Haaaaaaa...more like 80+ stacks, with my current setup. It's not the biggest possible charcoal pit, but it's big enough to produce at least a standard crate-and-a-half of charcoal per firing. Maybe two crates. Really wouldn't want to do that with immersive firewood chopping!

[Michael Gates]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

But that's also with relatively easy charcoal production. A half-dozen stacks of logs is sufficient, if you aren't going nuts like building roads out of charcoal.  But if you had t split all 96 of those logs, even at 3 hits per log, that's 288 clicks. I'm reasonably patient, but I'm not 288-clicks-for-a-minimal-stake patient.

The process for splitting logs by hand would be click-and-hold for multiple items. Just lean on the button and watch the animation, like cutting trees or digging a big hole or almost everything. Probably have to play with the timing, but that's part of development.

2 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

The reason is obviously that it wasn't anywhere nearly as bad as we thought going into it. It takes, what, 9 to make an oven? Only 32 to make a stack of firebrick? It makes it worthwhile to spend a little effort getting tier 2 refractory, but only a little.

Fire clay is okay... for the first year. I'm in June of Year One, and have thoroughly cleansed every bit of flint from within a few hundred squares, and I'm going to have to make about six more bloomeries to process the doubled disc of hematite I've been mining, so another stack of flint from.. somewhere. I suspect that when people start running multiplayer servers into their third player year, they're going to start using flint as currency

[ribbbbbs]

On 1/9/2025 at 3:57 PM, Michael Gates said:

The solution here is to make manual logsplitting harder, so that a machine is comparatively better. There's a simple way to handle that. Have the player create a log-splitting platform-- easy to imagine a recipe for that, possibly something like one log in middle of the craft grid and several stones below it. Place that platform on the ground, axe in main hand, stack of logs in off hand, and hit the platform once for each log. You get a cool animation where the log from off-hand goes on platform, the axe comes down (nngh!), and the logs fall off to the left and right. Immersion, yay!

I like this creative thought process and having a mechanical log splitter would be cool, although the device should allow the player to swap out an axe head for a saw blade so one may automatically make either boards or logs. The only problem I really have with this idea is that in an austere situation, requiring a specialized block to chop firewood significantly increases the amount of time needed to set up an emergency fire. I think merely changing the manual process to 1-click -> 1 action makes it sufficiently grindy to motivate players to get a mechanical log splitter (although it should probably be holdable like the quern to keep people from getting any more carpel tunnel from this game).

HOWEVER

If this change were to be added into the game, then for consistency's sake, the process of crushing stuff with the hammer should work the same way. Imagine grinding out all the logs needed for cooking, pottery, and metalworking, or all the copper for tools, weapons, and armor. Overall, I think it would be pretty limiting to what one could do in the early game and significantly emphasize the role of mechanical power thereafter. These changes might well make the game too much of a grind fest for most people. I think that for it to work, the devs would have to concurrently add some nerfed from of mechanical power that is accessible earlier than wind power and less resource intensive (maybe waterwheels that are underpowered compared to windmills or animal tractors that tire after a certain amount of time).

Also, I am deeply opposed to having durability for mechanical tools. They are hard to set up and not having to worry about durability is part of the reward. I do agree that there should be functional tiers for pulverizes and helve hammers like there is for anvils. 

Edited January 14, 2025 by ribbbbbs

[Teh Pizza Lady]

On 1/9/2025 at 6:56 PM, LadyWYT said:

Neither am I. In reality, I doubt the wood-chopping process would need to change if a sawmill were added. Just the convenience of having a machine to refine logs into planks and firewood instead of having to do it yourself in the crafting grid would be incentive enough to build one. And there'd still be mods in the event it wasn't immersive enough.

I see no reason they couldn't add a splitting maul to the game that works similarly to the helve hammer (could even use the same helve hammer toggle) however, there's the problem with wood splitting and cutting being so easy normally that it's impossible for me to see a benefit of having one. The helve hammer cannot be automated so I'm not sure this one could either.

[Thorfinn]

On 1/9/2025 at 7:38 PM, Michael Gates said:

I'm in June of Year One, and have thoroughly cleansed every bit of flint from within a few hundred squares, and I'm going to have to make about six more bloomeries to process the doubled disc of hematite I've been mining

Holy cow, I missed that. June of year 1 and you are either in Iron or soon to be? Wow. Just wow. 

[Michael Gates]

The year you spawn in is Year Zero, so I didn't eat all the flint THAT fast

also, these forums need a "nom" icon.

[Michael Gates]

7 hours ago, traugdor said:

I see no reason they couldn't add a splitting maul to the game that works similarly to the helve hammer (could even use the same helve hammer toggle) however, there's the problem with wood splitting and cutting being so easy normally that it's impossible for me to see a benefit of having one. The helve hammer cannot be automated so I'm not sure this one could either.

This is what I've been talking about. If you want to add "advanced, hi-tech" versions of operations that don't have one now, you have to change the "low-tech" versions to be slower and more work because right now they're all "three clicks to fnord an entire stack." This applies to a LOT of possible machines, and gives insight into why the existing ones work the way they do.

[Thorfinn]

On 1/15/2025 at 1:24 AM, Michael Gates said:

The year you spawn in is Year Zero, so I didn't eat all the flint THAT fast

also, these forums need a "nom" icon.

Oh, my bad. Never noticed that. Never noticed that there's a year listed at all. I take it it's included on the character screen?

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

I take it it's included on the character screen?

It is. I'm not entirely sure why it starts at year 0, but it does.

[Thorfinn]

43 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

It is. I'm not entirely sure why it starts at year 0, but it does.

Shouldn't have surprised me. Starting at 0 is a coder thing. Similarly, the height being the y-coordinate is probably also a coder thing -- Perlin noise typically uses the y-coordinate that way.