marmarmar34 Posted January 8 Report Posted January 8 To anyone that's used the Rivers mod, how well would it transition into the base game? Do the rivers run for a long distance, or are they roughly the same length of vanilla lakes? Do they feel good to interact with early game? Are there any noticeable drawbacks (besides bugs) that may detract from the main experience? I understand the team is looking into alternative power sources like water and steam, how well do you think water wheels would integrate into the main game? What would be the drawbacks in comparison to wind power? What materials would be taxed for water wheels as to not make wind obsolete? In my opinion, the devs would have to come up with a reasonable downside to water wheels as to not make windmills obsolete. Water wheels would provide consistent power year round at any time of the day. Windmills are inconsistent and require flax, which can only be obtained in bulk by farming. Rivers would be a beautiful addition, and would make boats far more useful. I may just be unlucky, but I have yet to see a body of water large enough to justify investing into even a raft. What are your opinions?
LadyWYT Posted January 8 Report Posted January 8 17 minutes ago, marmarmar34 said: To anyone that's used the Rivers mod, how well would it transition into the base game? Do the rivers run for a long distance, or are they roughly the same length of vanilla lakes? Do they feel good to interact with early game? Are there any noticeable drawbacks (besides bugs) that may detract from the main experience? I've not used the mod so take what I say with a grain of salt, but judging by what I've seen lurking around the forums and mod database, the rivers can be fairly long or fairly short. The main drawbacks seem to be that the rivers aren't the most realistic as they just tunnel through terrain as needed, and the mod itself seems to be prone to causing issues with other mods related to worldgen. 20 minutes ago, marmarmar34 said: I understand the team is looking into alternative power sources like water and steam, how well do you think water wheels would integrate into the main game? What would be the drawbacks in comparison to wind power? What materials would be taxed for water wheels as to not make wind obsolete? I doubt wind will ever be obsolete. The main advantage to a water wheel is that it's a steady source of power; the wind will quit blowing, but the water won't stop flowing. The advantage to wind power though is that you can utilize it almost anywhere, whereas a water wheel will almost certainly require a natural water source that's moving fast enough to generate power. No buckets here! The only other flaw I see to water power is that the water source could potentially freeze over, but that would probably require more complex freeze mechanics as fast-moving water doesn't freeze easily. So...pretty much the same things you noted in your post. 24 minutes ago, marmarmar34 said: Rivers would be a beautiful addition, and would make boats far more useful. I may just be unlucky, but I have yet to see a body of water large enough to justify investing into even a raft. If you're playing on default world generation, the world will be 97.5% land, meaning you'll find an ocean or two eventually but otherwise not have much water to really sail. I've found 80% landcover to be much better, as the world is still majority land but will include enough oceans/large lakes to make the sailboat feel useful.
pigfood Posted January 8 Report Posted January 8 29 minutes ago, marmarmar34 said: In my opinion, the devs would have to come up with a reasonable downside to water wheels as to not make windmills obsolete. Water wheels would provide consistent power year round at any time of the day. Windmills are inconsistent and require flax, which can only be obtained in bulk by farming. Flax isn't particularly hard to come by. I'm growing 500 plots of flax in my first year. In the vanilla game, windmill setups that work well with low wind look absolutely ridiculous. I've used 16+ full vanilla sail sets (as in 16x 20 sails) for a single (geared-up) helve hammer. The "Millwright" mod makes things look a lot more reasonable. Even though I'm overbuilding to a ridiculous degree, the setup doesn't provide reliable power. I would highly appreciate reliable power, even if the resource investment was a lot higher than windmills.
PoisonedPawn777 Posted January 8 Report Posted January 8 (edited) Using the rivers mod personally, for the most part it's pretty good. There's the occasional gaping circular tunnel cutting through a mountain to facilitate the river, the river current also seems to extend a fair bit out into the ocean which is noticeable when sailing. It also by dumb luck happened to generate a river directly through one of the story locations which disturbed enough of the entry that I had to use creative to break a few blocks in order to get in. Overall, a positive addition though. I will add that the rivers still freeze over in the winter, one will want wind power if they plan on doing any smithing during the colder months, which tends to be what I spend a large portion of my time doing. Edited January 8 by PoisonedPawn777 1
regex Posted January 8 Report Posted January 8 Technically there should be no real issue adding rivers to the base game in a better way than simply tunneling through the landscape. They already use a heatmap system for ore, no reason one can't be added for drainage which would interface with world height. Other terrain generation systems have already done this, it's just a matter of understanding and implementing it. The biggest hurdle IMO would be creating water sources that make sense. The default land mass percent might cause issues and would likely have to change, and it would have to take into account older saves, maybe only using that for new worlds, but it's technically feasible. We could even get features like the Colorado River. As far as water wheels, drawbacks have already been pointed out. I'd probably require a bigger outlay in resin since they shouldn't need flax, but that's really it. Might be a little weird requiring natural water source blocks though considering a good water wheel setup will likely require terraforming. Water wheels might also be higher torque but overall lower speed, meaning consistent power that can be geared up for speed (higher material outlay). I'd avoid the issues from mods like Immersive Engineering by only allowing a certain numbers of flowing source blocks to influence power; no weird water cages needed.
CastIronFabric Posted January 9 Report Posted January 9 (edited) The devs will be looking into rivers specifically for possibly making it part of the base game. Edited January 9 by CastIronFabric
marmarmar34 Posted January 9 Author Report Posted January 9 35 minutes ago, CastIronFabric said: The devs will be looking into rivers specifically for possibly making it part of the base game. Oh I'm aware. I was more asking about how the current river mod works, and if it would integrate neatly in the base game.
PurpleSaline Posted January 9 Report Posted January 9 The main issue I could see with waterwheels as opposed to windmills is upscaling quantity. A large number of waterwheels would need a larger footprint than an equivalent number of windmills. You'd also be limited with waterwheel speed by how fast your river runs while you can always build the windmills higher to access faster winds. And while I'm sure there are realistic ways around those limitations I don't think I'd WANT them in game. I think this way the two balance each other nicely and both would continue to add value.
HalfAxd Posted January 9 Report Posted January 9 I really like the river mod. For the base game, it would be interesting to see the current change based on rainfall up river from where the player is. Flooding should also be considered. Maybe that's the downside to water wheels... This could get really interesting.
marmarmar34 Posted January 9 Author Report Posted January 9 35 minutes ago, PurpleSaline said: You'd also be limited with waterwheel speed by how fast your river runs while you can always build the windmills higher to access faster winds. That's more of a torque issue rather than a speed issue. You can still have weak winds transformed into insane speeds if you have enough overall torque.
PurpleSaline Posted January 9 Report Posted January 9 (edited) 3 hours ago, marmarmar34 said: That's more of a torque issue rather than a speed issue. You can still have weak winds transformed into insane speeds if you have enough overall torque. Right! Misspoke, meant torque Edited January 9 by PurpleSaline
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